Popular Music

by Stephen Burt

Winner of the 1999 Colorado Prize for Poetry

"In this beautiful debut volume, Stephen Burt, in poetic actions that range with unusual ease from prose to sonnets and free verse, explorers the sensation of selfhood as it presents itself, in all its fractured parts, for re-formation. His speaker moves from the longing to 'be someone else'—to rid himself of every version of his own shadow—through a multitude of sensations covered by the notion of 'blasphemy' of soul, where words themselves are a source of anxiety, to slow accommodation (especially powerfully rendered as a capacity for dream and the knowledge dream-logic allows) with the Kafkaesque free-form guilt of personhood. Passionate and deeply accomplished, this is most truly elegant and honest work."
—Jorie Graham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dream of the Unified Fields: Selected Poems 1974-1994

"In poems that are personal in their distrust of constructions of gendered self, dazzling in their speed of association, and masterful in their orchestration of an insistently ebullient music, Stephen Burt pulls the cork from a new century. Burt's spicy, heuristic mix of high-literary and sub-pop culture requires a new reader. My dear, it is you."
—Forrest Gander, author of Science & Steepleflower

Genres: Poetry

85 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

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

[Uther Pendragon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the intelligence, passion, and skill displayed here.

Popular Music is a magnificent book, one that excites the mind and stirs the soul. In these beautiful, sometimes haunting poems, are many powerful lines that grabbed me and spoke to me in ways that only great poetry can.

Some of this I will carry within me for all my remaining years.

There are moments of such raw vulnerability it makes your heart ache.

There is a longing here that's so poignant it almost becomes a physical presence presiding over these poems. Luckily, we know there's an inspiring happiness every bit as poignant at the end of this yearning to make the outer and inner selves become in sync.

We know, especially among poets, that this story could've went in a tragic direction. (Maybe it never even came close to tragedy. One can hope. I don't know any details. I just know that too often longing and tragedy go together; and sadly, they manifest themselves in terrible ways in poets.)

Thankfully, tragedy didn't strike this situation. Anyone interested need only Google Stephanie Burt and see the pictures of her ebullient smile, one that just barely holds back the giggles it seems—the kind of smile that makes you smile the moment you see it. . . .

The layout of the book is superb, too. The poems are presented in an order that heightens the tension. The effects are stunning.

There is also, at times, a playfulness in these poems in the form of, among other things, meaningful pop culture references.

Burt's profound mixture of literary and popular culture, as well as the style, words chosen, devices employed, etc. is awesome in the can't-wait-to-see-what's-next kind of way. There was no walking the line between ridiculous and sublime here.

This is sublime poetry.

This is the kind of book, and the kind of poet, that makes me wish I were a critic because I'd love to have more to write about both of them.

This is high art. Read it.

Here are a couple of quotes from the blurbs on the back of the book; in my opinion, one couldn't ask for better praise from better sources:

". . .in poetic actions that range with unusual ease from prose to sonnets and free verse, explores the sensation of selfhood as it presents itself, in all its fractured parts, for re-formation. . . ." —Jorie Graham

". . .poems that are personal in their distrust of constructions of gendered self, dazzling in their speed of association, and masterful in their orchestration of an insistently ebullient music [. . .] Burt's spicy, heuristic mix of high-literary and sub-pop culture requires a new reader. My dear, it is you." —Forrest Gander

[Inez Beall]

Love Love Music History beginning of 2 beat to 3.