Shorter Poems

by Gerald Burns

Gerald Burns is a leading practitioner of long-lined, thickly textured verse. "These / long lines are long life to us, go back to Kenneth Irby's 'A Set' I saw first in / a flyer from Lawrence, KS where Burroughs chats with Cage whose spitbubbles / may remind us with Zukofsky the heart of the bluebonnet's black. Anyone can learn from anything, " he writes, and as these lines from "For J. R. Here" indicate, Burns has learned his long dragnet lines display a lifetime of wide reading and close observation from an astonishing range of subjects.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gerald was a dear and generous man, a true eccentric, and possibly the best-read man I've ever known. He was also a poet like no other, obsessed with form and metrics while at the same time completely open to, even enamored of, experiment, deeply involved with the whole history of poetry in English but never happier than when reading some young poet's latest work in manuscript. No school ever claimed his allegiance --he was pleased to read anything.

I miss him.

This book, incidentally, was Robert Creeley's pick for the National Poetry Series.