Stephen Burt's Blog, page 4

See you in Seattle, and Bellingham, and Walla Walla!

I’m rather excited about next week’s Pacific Northwest tour: Tuesday night Nov. 12 I read at the fabled Open Book in Seattle at 7:30pm.

On Wednesday Nov. 13 I’ll be at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Thursday Nov. 14 I shall be the grateful guest of Whitman College in Walla Walla.

And on Friday Nov. 15 the tour wraps up with a critical talk, “The Nearly Baroque in Contemporary Poetry,” at 6pm at the University of Washington Seattle as a guest of its English Department in Humanities Center 35. Perhaps I’ll see a few of you there!

Boston Book Festival

I’ll be reading at the Boston Book Festival, at 2:30pm Saturday October 19, at Cuffs Bar with David Rivard and Lucie Brock-Broido. Forget me: come see them! Lucie’s new book is something else: elaborate, scary, trustworthy, Baroque.

Twin Cities Book Festival

Live near the Twin Cities? Plan to visit this weekend? I’ll see you there! I’ll be at the Twin Cities Book Festival along with, among others, Rae Armantrout, David Wojahn and Nicholson Baker. I’ll be on a panel asking and answering a question that sounds very much like “What Is a Classic?” along with Alison McGhee, Gary Dop, Kevin Smokler, and Macalester College’s Marlon James. Things start happening at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds at 10am and continue happening until 5pm; our panel’s at 10:30am.

This annual event is still my favorite book festival; it’s run by the good folks from Rain Taxi.

A revealing talk with John Ebersole

John Ebersole does the New Books in Poetry podcast, which has recently interviewed Michael Robbins, Lisa Olstein, Dana Gioia and me. It’s an hour-plus of me talking and John asking what I hope turned out to be very good questions; you can listen in whole or in part.

“What advice do you have for young poets and critics?”

At TED-Edinburgh around interview she conducted with me about how to read poetry, and why. Thanks, Laura!

Rebecca Porte interviews me for Bookslut

I first encountered Rebecca Porte a while ago at Mac. Now she’s half the Oona-verse and an Octophile and a considerable poet and critic at the University of Michigan and she’s interviewed me. I talk about Yeats and curry in Scotland and being trans and traffic lights and meerkats and some other stuff. I think it came out well.

H. L. Hix interviews me and I interview him.

At The Conversant, a lobe of the multifoliate online litmag The Volta, the considerable poet H. L. Hix and I talk about our work. I ask him, he asks me. I think it worked out. Andy Fitch mediated.

Reading at the New York Public Library, Sept. 10

Come hear me along with Amy Lawless and Michael Cirelli as we read poetry for the Academy of American Poets at the NYPL this Tuesday at 6:30pm. Come early, say hi to the lions, get a good seat.

We’ll also be reading choice poems from MS in the Berg Collection, which has Randall Jarrell’s papers and Auden’s papers and much more, and where I have spent many productive hours.

In which a reviewer gets me exactly right.

The reviewer is Kirsten Kaschock, writing about my new book of poems in Open Letter, and I’m not sure how to thank her enough.

Common Good Books, St. Paul, August 29

I’ll be reading from my new book of poetry (and perhaps some even newer poems) at Common Good Books on Thursday, Aug. 29, at 7pm, along with the remarkable poet, teacher and fiction writer John Colburn.