Advice from the Lights

by Stephen Burt

Stephen is sometimes Stephanie and sometimes wonders how his past and her past are their own collective memory

Advice from the Lights is a brilliant and candid exploration of gender and identity and a series of looks at a formative past. It's part nostalgia, part confusion, and part an ongoing wondering: How do any of us achieve adulthood? And why would we want to, if we had the choice? This collection is woven from and interrupted by extraordinary sequences, including Stephanie poems about Stephen's female self; poems on particular years of the poet's early life, each with its own memories, desires, insecurities, and pop songs; and versions of poems by the Greek poet Callimachus, whose present-day incarnation worries (who doesn't?) about mortality, the favor of the gods, and the career of Taylor Swift. The collection also includes poems on politics, location, and parenthood. Taken all together, this is Stephen Burt's most personal and most accomplished collection, an essential work that asks who we are, how we become ourselves, and why we make art.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Transgender

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2017

About the author

I write books about poetry, essays on other people’s poems, books of my own poems, and shorter pieces about poems, poets, poetry, comics, science-fiction writers, political controversies, obscure pop groups, and the WNBA.

My published books are: Close Calls With Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (Graywolf, Spring 2009), The Forms of Youth: Adolescence and 20th Century Poetry (Columbia University Press, 2007), Parallel Play: Poems (Graywolf, 2006), Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden (editor with Hannah Brooks-Motl, Columbia University Press, 2005), Randall Jarrell and His Age (Columbia University Press, 2002), and Popular Music: Poems (Center for Literary Publishing, 1999).

I am an Associate Professor of English at Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard, I spent several years at Macalester College, first as an Assistant Professor, then as an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English. I received my Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 2000, my A.B. from Harvard in 1994.

Reviews

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars for this collection. This wasn’t a bad book, there were quite a few pieces I really enjoyed. Some poems didn’t quite stick with me, but overall worth reading.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to know how to review this book, and maybe I would have done better if I hadn’t tried to learn anything beyond the text about the author. The book is credited to Stephen Burt, and some of the poems are in the voice of a female persona named Stephanie. I’m not sure how long ago the book was turned in and set for publication (the wheels of poetry publishing often turn slowly), but Google tells me that in the meantime, Stephen has transitioned into Stephanie full-time. (Read about it in her own words here: http://forward.com/sisterhood/376274/... ). It leaves me not sure how to discuss anything about this book as it relates to the life of the author, so I think I’m going to be a New Critic for the moment and focus on the text itself.

The Stephanie poems are definitely the most lively ones in the collection, as other reviewers have mentioned. There are also many examples of a different kind of persona poem, written in the voice of animals or inanimate objects. (Some examples are “Kites,” “Roly Poly Bug,” and “Herring Gull.”) I enjoyed most of these poems as well. Burt obviously has a huge vocabulary, but the poems never seem pedantic or labored, as sometimes happens with poets enamored of polysyllabic words. There are also a set of chronological poems like “My 1979” and “My 1980” that give us a snapshot of the author at a certain age. These were a little harder for me to get into, as they are full of pop-culture references that would only make sense if you are exactly the same age as the poet.

I’m glad I had a chance to read this book, and I hope my hesitation about how to review it won’t stop anyone from giving it a try.

(Note: I received an advance reader’s copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.)

[Amalfi Disla · Rating 1 out of 5]

Este poemario fue un regalo y empece a leerlo sin ver la sinopsis y cuando vi que a veces el genero de los poemas cambiaba, leí la sinopsis y me pareció super interesante y valiente que el autor escribiera poemas según el genero es que se sintiera en ese momento.

Pero lamentablemente el lenguaje empleado y la forma en que están escritos los poemas dificulto que el entendimiento del mismo.

[Dani Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were really beautiful moments in this book, but overall, the overly erudite language was incredibly off putting and left a bad taste. The word pretentious wouldn't leave my mind. The subject matter of the poems -- gender identity, sexuality, comfort in one's body, etc. -- were worthy and necessary conversations to have, but I was not impressed with the effort.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found myself identifying in some way with every poem. Is Advice from the Lights my latest friend, or my latest-read book of poetry? Dunno. I enjoyed reading it muchly.

[Darrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway and consider myself fortunate for it. I found the poetry within the pages here to be frank, ingenuous and endearing, nostalgic and agreeably tender. The poems in this collection reflect an exploration of how (often asking when) do we attain adulthood and more subtlety at what point do we become aware that we have. By all appearances the poetry seems to have been arranged chronologically which is a benefit to reading this collection. Several of the poems are titled indicating the year that it is reflecting on (My 1979, My 1980, etc.) while a few other titles instantly inform what the poem's stanzas are written about (The Cars' Greatest Hits). Many have a personal nature to them, helping us to both understand the theme of the collection as well as reveal much about the poet (and their childhood/immediate past) to aid us in articulating the deeper meaning being conveyed here. I felt that it reads like a smooth flowing life-narrative actually.

I very much liked quite a number of the poems here, with a handful of them containing lines of verse that immediately took hold of me, inspiring me to make notes in the margins so I could be certain to enjoy them once again when I return to the book. 'Advice From The Lights' is a collection of poetry that is well worth the time to read - especially for those of us readers who include poetry as a regular part of their reading routine. This is one that is not to missed.

[nouha! · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars :).
I haven't read a poem book in quite some time and don't know how I would review it right, but overall I definitely thought that this read was worth it with such interesting, humorous, and introspective works by Stephanie Burt! The reason some stars have been decreased was primarily that some poems in this booklet were either too vague, confuzzling and in general, did not create a connection or emotion within me. However, that's my personal experience and I 100% do not expect that to be the same for every reader (maybe the poems got through them rather than me)!
I decided that every poem in this book that created an empathic and special connection with me would be noted to share here :) the following poems of the novel that I really liked and appreciated were:
Ice for the Ice Trade; Hermit Crab; Mean Girls; Fairy Story Stephanie; Herring Gull; My 1986; My 1987; Sadder; A Nickle on Top of a Penny; Advice from the Lights; Paper Stephanie; The Sun Rising; Spoken for a Pair of Ferrets; After Callimachus; Tiara Stephanie; Concord Grapes; White Lobelia.
Overall this was definitely quite a worthwhile NEA Big Reads book and would definitely recommend readers to engulf in for the memories, messages about adulthood and childhood, reimagined childhood as her girl identity, and metaphors with animals and inanimate things (like Hermit Crab, Herring Gull, Concord Grapes...) that are all conveyed by Stephanie Burt distinctively!

[Jee Koh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen (also Stephanie) Burt has made girlhood her territory, not looked back upon in nostalgia or regret, but as it is happening. Attacking it with memories, real and imagined, and with poems written after Callimachus and Baudelaire, she treats it appropriately with seriousness and artistry. Advice from the Lights is a fantastic feat of recall and imagination, rendered in language alive to its own possibilities.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5 Stars) From one of the most brilliant literary minds I've ever encountered, "Advice from the Lights" is an accessible collection of semi-autobiographical poems about gender identity and the evolution of becoming who you are. Some of my favorite poems include:
A Nickel on Top of a Penny
Fairy Story Stephanie
the series of “My Year” poems
Secondhand Flashlight
Over Sacramento
Ice for the Ice Trade

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

quite enjoyable, think I was expecting something a bit more insightful or vulnerable in the "imagined childhood" series, but that probably has more to do with my own cis entitlement to her thoughts and feelings than any failure on her part. They were still my favorite poems and honestly felt like real recollections rather than anything hoped for. I'm not even a good enough writer to explain how one would do that artfully.

[Melissa Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love "My 1979" so much -- excerpt below:

I had become convinced
that character was fate.
Almost anything could result in tears.
I wanted to stay at Alison’s house overnight
and wake up as a new girl, or a new mutant,
or a new kind of humanity, engineered
to travel at more than half the speed of light,
but I wasn’t allowed. My bedtime and I were both eight.

[Jennifer Velez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't necessarily think it was a bad book. I just think that I don't gravitate towards books of poetry. It was beautifully written individually, but I just couldn't get into it as a whole.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems that look at the poet's life and identity. Fascinating to me when someone is complicated. A few poems really touched me, but I think there were references to science that I didn't understand.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Persona poems were the highlight in this collection.

[k-os]

Drooling over the specificity of these nouns. Particularly liked the poems about years in the speaker's life: "My 1984."

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

After Callimachus and other faves

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of trans brilliance, i found myself tied to the ceiling

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems about gender, identity, nostalgia, and life in general.

from After Callimachus: "Half of me—an intangible self—is alive; / the other part has gone I don't know where— / either it's dead, or it's lost in what it calls love."

from Gymnastics Stephanie: "whether any of the people watching me who have not done the thing I do know what / I can do or what I have been trying to do or how hard it can be or how easy it seemed / before I knew what I was doing not that I know what I'm doing now"

from Anubis: "An interest in the future of the living / as it is figured in the unsatisfiable / demands of the dead."

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 3/4 stars

[Critter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy from a Goodreads giveaway. There are some really interesting poems in this collection. This collection of poems was very enjoyable.

[David C Ward]

See my forthcoming review in PNReview

[jo ianni]

Burt's use of traditional form throughout this collection is playful but at times too noticeable. While recognizing a rhyme scheme may open the reader to how a poem sits within poetic traditions and history, for some it can pull them completely out from the poem's movement. The standouts in this book are poems like Hermit Crab. The poems where the speaker is completely what the poem suggests however, there is a sense of excess where the poem appears to suggesting a speaker that is not the animal or object in question. For these poems aforementioned I will have to return to this text. They are simply magical. The book itself has a feel of several chapbooks put together to form a whole. I am looking forward to seeing a more cohesive project from Burt in my future reading which mean obviously that there will be reading in future.