Title: Whose Words These Are (10): Stephen Burt

" I'm Christopher -- with the -- professor and critic Steve convert who brings Kermit the Frog in rock and roll into our portrait series. Whose words these are. This is open source American conversation global. Accused from the Watson institute at Brown University. Steve -- is -- continued Thirtysomething Harvard professor who blogs about. Contemporary poetry and separately about his three year old -- taste in music and food. He writes a lot of portrait -- with comic touches as you here. But also with a civic boys verging on the political vision. It's a serious threat produced -- attitude and our conversation. That if we read well enough if we made -- aren't good enough. People could still resolve a lot of the year and his quiet and hard times."

" The greatest -- committed the picture and what with a poems that said. This is your life."

" William Butler -- And rather than re edu. Some. Is most famously the let's say capital are romantic. Papon's. The song or wandering -- our new second Troy AS on an -- love to agreed deal. When where and it was. The bit shorter than I am now -- the job."

" Or even -- to -- auntie EM that we could do that I will give you home that I loved early and love now and love to teach and that presents. I -- it's not as age. -- Not as a man in thrall to a set of symbols that are hard to interpret. Not as a representative. Irish writer or Irish ran. I'm not as. -- character of myth. But as someone new working very hard hat series of more or less challenging techniques including -- the craft of verse. But the I DD work of running a theater company is a thirteen line. No on that sun and none terrorists auriemma home to a gestures towards both of those difficult Holmes called appropriately -- Fascination of what's difficult. This fascination of what's difficult. Has -- this out of my veins and rent spontaneous. Joy and natural content. Out of my heart there's something ills are colts. That must. And as if it has not holy blood. Nor on -- this leapt from cloud. To cloud shiver under the lash sheiks green and jolt. As it has dragged the -- metal like first on plays that have. Have to be set up and fifty ways on the d.'s war with every need and tilt. Theater business management at man I swear before the dawn comes around again I'll find a stable and pull out the -- That I did not -- best. Home it's certainly not as most ambitious home but it's one of his most immediately memorable. It is I immediately attractive to me. That was when I first encountered it. Because of the ways that so many of the Arlen Specter handled. Because. Strains of emotion behind them. And because of the way that it suggests that poetry is not something that you must retire as -- hopes to retire in the lake island and the screen of course never did it. You you don't it's not just necessarily something that you retired. Prior to Palin did you it's not something that takes you away from the world for as long as you want to be it's also a way of arranging language to reflect the inner -- that we have. When we are in the world and we have obligations. And ambitions. And people to whom we are responsible. And with whom we wish to work or must work and actions that we want to take -- the car with someone. Who is seemed deeply engaged and frustrating we engaged. In this social and and the -- for the language and in the other -- well."

" It was not a poem that said the young Steve -- come -- yes is your game yes yes. And would you do about it."

" Wrote badly as we all do for a number of years I like to think -- more interestingly now. And it also made me want to explain to other people why I liked it and that of course is what. Much perhaps most criticism. Literary criticism artistic criticism is. I explaining. Two other people in language that they. Enjoy or at least don't mind process. Why we like what we luck and sometimes that entails explaining why we don't like some other."

" Steve when did the went to the phrases modern and you post modern become significant rare or do day. Not post modern -- all of my friends are. How does one get from. He ate his assignment to himself to. Post modern consciousness. Them."

" I'm going to stand up to answer that question please. And to win a sit down again. I'll be holding the book by giants' -- The book is house -- days. It is one of my favorite. Among John experienced many books. And I'm going to read you the second half of that -- is great column street musicians. So like cradle this average violin. And knows only forgotten show tunes but argues the possibility. A freed acclimation anchored. Two adult refrain the year hurting over on itself in November with this piece is among the day's. More literal. The meat more visible on the broad. Our question of the place of origin hangs like smoke. How we picnic in pine forests. In Koppel -- with the water always seeping up and left art trash. Sperm and excrement everywhere. Smeared on the landscape. To make of us what we call it. -- That's the post modern its finest perhaps. It is this sense of I believe goodness of reconstruction. Of how awful moment of combing. Asked her. Previous attempts at reconstruction. It is this sense includes a sense that we should perhaps not that we cannot take ourselves. Entirely seriously as we tried to adjust our -- York times and it is -- sense of instability. -- a sense of -- and instability within the work of art and instability within ourselves. That will never be resolved. The modernist. Attitude hopes that there are answers it says. Our. Fear of our time -- disquiet with our times. Might be fixed if we read well enough that we make -- aren't good enough. Errands. If there is a post modern sensibility. Among my favorite contemporary poets among many of them it says no are disquiet will never be. Resolved to. The major questions that -- leads us to ask about ourselves and about our times don't. Necessarily. Have answers certainly not steeple answers answers we can continue to believe it. But we keep looking for those answers in any way we keep playing that ash Varian. Violin on the -- trash -- and we know. That's very knows that others will come after us to make of themselves -- take it."

" I love that reading. Siebert count the degrees of separation you feel from the principal and sisters out there and the and that and the relatives. In the in the world reported today."

" Certainly John done."

" This is quite. When -- can't avoid seeming. Certainly Eric Indian linking oneself to the group went once after the great did this way. But -- such links had been solicited and I will will try to provide them. -- I hope. Browning. Robert Browning perhaps. William Carlos Williams. Certain sides of Whitman. -- stop somewhere waiting for you. The -- who. With his right hand was a newspaperman. Always trying to find. Time frame. Straight game impressions from the outside world from what he saw without. At first making them into deep symbols and then who with his left hand news that we all have an inner life. That is never fully reduce civil which shows him that duality in -- Then newspaper man and a man of being hidden spirit. Appeals to me. There's something of that in William Carlos Williams. And it's why Williams among. Major. Modern tests. Is there -- writer to whom I want to feel closest. And other modes I suppose -- the close to Stephens. To lol to bishop. Rich Stevens of America which Stephens lake Stevens then obliquely Stephens Stephens of debris of plates in mind. The Stevenson begins at home there is so little to -- and warm it is as if we were never children. Or this Stephens of retrospective. Knicks who seems to be a good parent to write this only of old age. Since he was rather young these -- so. Well I find the most memorable Stephens Stephens that comes. Most often to my mind is. How that Stephens Stephens -- a B worth of automotive the rocket -- it as you leave the room. If you knew that home where he. Looks at himself as it and -- and says they wonder haven't lived skeletons life. As a -- believer in reality a countryman of all the balloons in the world. And that is -- Stevens who speaks perhaps with a high degree of warning. Of caution to anyone. Who has tried to make a life. As a critic. Or as a thinker or as a theorist. Or even as a teacher to people whose. Sense of themselves and his professional lives are lived so often in -- words. And four words. As William district. The doctor the doctor -- the Doctor Who made has those who didn't make house calls. And you even when he wasn't making house calls had. The whole spectrum of America except for the very rich coming to him when he was consulting. At the hospital. In time forget that was in rather further in -- hospital was in Paterson. He kept that south position on the hospital until he had mandatory retirement in his sixties has people did that. And when. He would receive these absurd letters from. How an ally in the twenties and thirties saying you don't really understand America that case you haven't been sufficiently far west and your from immigrant stock. How Williams would say you're you don't understand America you haven't made any Americans or politics when he years. I paraphrase a paraphrase but this is the burden of Williams's claim not not all politics I need to be in touch with. Other people before their lives are represented not all post need to be newspaperman on the way to Whitman and Williams wore. But I love seeing that aspect of them and I think there's something of that. I myself and of course they're great for newspapers or read about the arts for news -- not count."

" As a critic as well as a quote deliberate. Just report to the dentist is quickly I'm sort of house how -- the business going."

" On American poetry in general has a lot to my mind a lot of very good practitioners a lot of books that I hope will. Deep red and red and red in the future for not all under three feet of water. And as -- once said we can't know which ones from our own timer great it's hard enough to figure out which ones are good. Many fewer of these books and even twenty years ago used traditional resource -- of Ryan and meter. And set stanza formed this is what Nicholson Baker's character -- charter is so. Let's set it out. Poets in my generation -- a little bit in me. Have in. That's and and warned that not grown up reading not grown up deeply acquainted with the kinds of devices that English poetry. That. Sydney and done and -- and gates grew up with. But deep down their own devices instead and we have more kinds of free -- and more kinds of reverse. Paul -- more kinds. Of reverse line and more kinds of of of way to constructing a chrome without stands -- without rhyme with out of central saliva -- Now we're successful kinds. Then we have perhaps there is to my mind. A lot to look at a lot -- that ought to survive if the world is just of course it's not. Now a lot of -- a lot of pilots have noticed that there's not a very large audience for that poetry. But we're not the first set of poets too worried. About the size and composition of the audience for poetry. -- Norwegian. First set of -- the first generation to think about what techniques are passing. Out of existence. When we ought to be looking at what techniques are becoming newly. Possible."

" I want you to get your -- to -- but -- A frame of how do you deal as a poet -- is. -- culture with pop culture with the digital age with the global Internet -- all these changes in. In the surrounding technologies. Of the of the."

" I don't know that the technology of the kinds of poetry that interests me. Has changed very much now that doesn't mean the world is this game. And I don't know that IE can get. Anything they can make the original lab right now today. -- the rural Riverside with an apple orchard newer I suspect can get anything I don't really original. Out -- New York's central park at its finest and most ebullient because that. It has been done by Franco Arab and others. Super brilliantly. But they do find myself writing about. Places in cities and in suburbs and entities in. Pop culture especially the eye in as we know say popular culture. About which I would like to read poems and about which I don't know any existing. Poems and you mentioned screen culture. I have written homes with movies in them they tend to be movies with Katharine Hepburn in them butts. I find myself moot. To right and having a sense that it got something new to say. Less often buy feature film. As important as it has been to America. Then. By. -- music especially rock music especially kinds and any instances of rock music that are very popular. And I have -- a docked at the television personalities. And our breaking circuits. -- For example. -- that rock music. Oppose account book superheroes. And I knew poem. Which I will read you if you like please. Out. Kermit the Frog Sesame Street and in this instance the Muppet Show. And you may be familiar with. Kermit the Frog in his guys as a reporter reporting from Sesame Street and you may also be familiar -- He is work as a kind of NC making sure all the other Muppets are in there place is either on Sesame Street or slightly later this career from."

" The market -- self portrait as felt amphibian."

" Do you beleaguered. Administrators. I am one of you. You came from the swamp to. It was harder. To get out. Harder still to be young and green but hardest of all to learn to run a whole show. I remain supposedly. In charge. Of -- dance marathon. And masochistic. Acrobat. A pig addicted to lipstick who hold black belts in several martial arts. A talking shag rug. Eight feet tall a bear who tries and tries and fails to entertain. A pantomime horse whose parts refused to leave their day glow yard. A rock band and it pepto bismol colored hair a callous from Mars who only know one song. Manama not. Whatever that means. I need a rest. I side. I -- I shrug in my canvas chair. And perk up again to chat with tonight's special guest. Who asks me why my eyes bug out. Go figure. I used to sit on the wall and read the -- all -- now we go on intent and I am happy to tell you what almost anyone. Who seems to be running things. Who'll say what you can't just backstage. Somebody bigger than we can ever be is pulling our strings. And to being green is not the hardest thing permanent no no it's being middle management. George Orwell who has a great essay or an average of -- You don't yet if Orwell. Of course and deplores killings political views as you'd expect. I've but he says. Liberals and people on the left as horrible takes himself to be had something to learn from Kipling not only has of -- Men and as and imagine her -- language. But as -- imagine there of people in positions because Kipling always asks himself if you were in charge what would you do what would you actually due. What kind of action would you have to take and what kind of compromise perhaps what you have to swallow hard and then make. And that is a series of questions. A series of questions about management about responsibility. About practicality. -- in a certain note I could also ask himself not in others that's. Many of our most. Passionate. -- interested in public life have not ask themselves lately. And and they don't need to know individual -- is worse for not asking such questions but poetry as a whole. Could use. Some instances. -- and homes in which this questions are asked questions about. Compromise about pragmatism about practicality. I would like to see more power than say about. About the responsible exercise of limited but real power rather than the imagination. Of unlimited power yes and it is new Tor is we."

" Heart. Why should say supposedly neutral Risley -- to right. Memorable albums and memorable leader posed particular. That. Reflects that kind of liberal pragmatic. We have to bring everyone together to do something will take the third best -- that's all we can get outlook. Lional trolling famously wrote a book called the liberal imagination. Now wanted to delete cookies wasn't -- there is a liberal imagination why doesn't liberalism as a way of living in the world. And he meant by that and I kind of pragmatic mid century liberalism for which you against it. Why does liberalism have. Storm expected imaginative avatars. Equal to the greatest imaginative achievements. Various kinds of right wing and left wing. Traditions I know is actually within liberalism does and that's what the reason teaching a seminar and William Carlos Williams but. It would be next we're liberalism to have more such avatar accidentally take. Create a couple couple ones."

" Yeah it typo -- news Steve and it's what I call the Victor Hugo GAAP sort of like whose piece of the nation. Great language but with a kind of -- the Norman -- gap in the northern Minnesota took them himself to be the kind of not poet but. But great writer of the public square -- and yes what's the last home -- you can think of that sort of spoke to the nation. From the public square. About the public business."

" I would distinguish. Between speaking. About. The nation. And speaking for it. I don't. Think it makes sense. Anymore. Four bullets to trying to speak. For. The whole nation. I love it when -- tries to do that I love that sometimes when kinki tries to do. And I love it very much win in -- public's fear from the early seventies. Air Emmons tries to do that and then decide that he actually can't do it too much of a private person but it was fun to try. But he does not have the I'm religious or quasi religious. Pop prophetic magical feeling that Walt Whitman and very few other writers. Have been able to have. In which you could say speak for the nation and I don't think -- act. Poetry has. An art form alert to the specific sounds and sources of every word."

" As an art form that is a minority are for right now. His best positioned to speak for the nation ends you can see it's realization that you can't do that anymore. Even in the career of Robert Lowell who one point was very much taken to speak for the nation. For the union -- a wonderful. Poem about politics. That ends with kind of of so -- self dramatizing the very. Expected to spare. Savage civility slides by on -- as a -- of the union of Coleman which lol realizes that no he can't. Speak. Four. The black children who were endangered. In the south. By the strife around -- brown versus board I nor can he speak. For the people who beating them up who are also Americans. He can speak only for the people who see themselves as like lol on that column for the union debt which in this case is. Northern liberals who were distant from the action. I don't think poets can try to speak. For all of America wants anymore although if you wanna do it try it I certainly don't think correlates with backgrounds like -- Which is. Economically and in many other ways fortunate. Northeast corridor Washington DC kind of background. Our our best position to try to speak for all of America. -- nor do I think writing poetry is a good way to cause political change. I think that's dinner a delusion it's been destructive to a lot of poetry. If you want to cause. Our society to be more just confined to candidate makes a phone calls -- volunteer."

" Or do other sorts of right. But if you want to represent. You were wounded. Mixed feelings and perhaps other people's mixed feelings as well and that is. What poetry is for. Current drug users and on career yet please I when he was deliberate act act act. This is a new as the new home -- new chrome this is -- prose poem called. I died. As children. We yearned for companionship. Of some sort but never knew what sort. As teens we knew. But found it nearly out of reach uncomfortably. Elusive. Tangled. Behind cotton bed curtains in inappropriate rooms at parties under attack the coroner basement stairs. Behind doors -- off true. Or in the -- whose -- of school dark rooms where no one develops unless they first copy to key. The colorless ideas of more recent years still sleep. Furiously. Inside us sub merged in their fixer close at hand. Some problems don't have solutions. And yet we live now and tried to tell one another."

" That we live. As we want to live now surrounded not by the people we hope to meet some years ago but by there will named -- fortunate demands. Go away. Find this space. We almost say. But never intend to say. As it all wishes could realize themselves should be only take back our rocky crawl spaces without sacrificing what we earned since then as if we had wrapped ourselves in our -- old news preserving desires until the year or the -- when we could open them up and begin to learn what they are."

" I realize that -- May be a lot to speak. On the radio. And rather dark grim images yes yes. I I wonder whether rather than. Leave you with it."

" I -- to read as well rock and roll on the haven't -- believe that. Rock and roll home with a series of near runs and -- runs there all on the the same."

" The same consonant sound that the corn based on a photograph. By Alex song that's it TH and photograph is called canyon -- bad news with physique Grand Rapids Minnesota. The tilt their guitars. And stare. Each boy puts one foot toward -- One where trailing wire would -- to an amplifier. -- amplifiers were there. Deals Gibson glitters like or. Chinese Ibanez hordes. White noise and it's black board. Double change shows it is fair to mention his college kids here get stuck behind the -- Each of the Brothers where's. A T shirt loose jeans and a pair of bruised -- pops up here -- garbage bad hugs the steel bar. The big rectangular blue or behind them looks like the door to a walk in refrigerator -- Midi -- the rest structure. A diner owner requires -- to spend six hours a week moving cases of the year. Well bill chops potatoes it's hours grease from the kitchen floor. -- imagine the national tour Stevie GBs the black cat hardcore. Or metal the glow in the lower -- is it open air pyrotechnics at dusk a show for. Or do you hope modest lead for. Side man jobs Al laborers this insurer work at studio engineers. You boys hole -- guitar is in a basement kitchen and hear what you think of them. Next year they promised to practice more. Right now there repertoire. Is six songs seven chords. Five originals and despair reworking of Koreans for a minute anthem about a lost car. Can't get there from here. And thank you have to do six songs seven current. Yeah it's a lot of encouragement and they've been practicing. It's actually not you know that that you play the guitar. No I hate that can -- I know about seven guitar chords and I don't really think guitar so."

" Steve -- what little bit about teaching political what are your students remember. Steve -- teaching thirty years from now."

" I hope they'll remember about what today. Ask them to read and they will have enjoyed it and they'll go back to it and continue to get pleasure in his -- out of the books that I. I introduced to him like William Carlos Williams is a secret codes and pros spring and all. Lauren Fischer skis book fire in flour or John -- songs and sonnets that collection of secular here I'd done. Richard powers as novel -- 2.2. The short stories and Alice Munro. This is Galloway. And I'll -- Rochester Lord Byron. Keeps his ode to autumn -- nagging gal Robert Browning -- hundred else -- I could go on which of the kids teach use these duties."

" Yeah. What do you think kids I don't know that they teach me anything in -- I frequently learn from them one. My one. I've learned recently from my students. What kind of minimal conceptual work is being done it in modern Korean poetry modern poetry in the Korean language. -- All of the tryouts for Olympic ice dancing. Work. What kind of space opera which is a kind of a large canvas adventure -- science fiction what kind of space opera. Is being written right now and how it interacts with the science fiction that I already. Care about. How people are reading and teaching Renaissance. Epic how to. Think about design how to ranger room and colors together and what. Those ways of thinking might have to do with the conjunction. And patterns in your poetry how to think about book covers. I don't think about book covers enough probably."

" Indulges in the Proust questionnaire before we're done. -- all time favorite character in fiction."

" gives you a list of finalists sure. -- The woman -- the viewpoint character I can't remember her name unfortunately she's not named off and by the older woman through most of the stories told in James -- treaties. Second novel brightness falls from the air. Well that's really recommendation for the novel. Rather then I suppose. For the character. Science fictional works it immediately to mind because and teaching science fiction right now -- Richard powers character is wonderful and Richard powers is -- tea at 2.2. Because it on it so many times but. Dairy. The viewpoint character from a Lauren -- on the frog hospital. -- Her deep and settlement about whether grown up means anything and does anything to you. I know whether it's ever worthwhile. Or deepened settlement about her relation to own. Past alarm Morse character berry is someone who it. I'm not -- tired out of teaching. -- they -- the bond."

" Is quite hard to forget and here's the characters here for just such. To him. It's not even clear fear factors such as him or her. This is the shooting him. That George Kelly used for her last collection of essays. Ma book I've always wanted to teach and have not had a chance to do so yet since I'm not a Victoria guest. But this is the it's. Wiser -- venue. A little full of himself or herself. But a practical. And pragmatic."

" And endlessly knowledgeable. Essayist persona. Drew whom George Eliot writes her last works and it's not entirely clear whether we should call them fiction or nonfiction they do wanna recommend them especially since. -- George -- is not someone who was recommended. Over and over and over to contemporary American poets and music poetry and she ought to be mean. Three -- for -- desert island."

" very -- to you by name not my favorite homes but my favorite very long. Homes if we're looking at desert islands and say oh well I'll go there. Steer by. Air hammonds is one of my favorite. Long long long -- lost is another and I would hope it'll come with paradise regained a wonderful under read it and not quite as long home."

" And so I'm gonna go with John Casper street clothes. What's the talent in most loved to have that you don't yet. The talent they'd most like to have that late to be a competent rock drummer. It's an industry gentleman who -- Peter Prescott's from the volcano science. And who's doing Steve -- work in another medium entirely maybe -- another century but."

" Hey I can't answer that question honestly without flattering myself but comparing myself to. Some of my favorite. Public critics. But if I'm doing what they want to do when they write about poetry for relatively large rather than scholarly. Audiences. Then doing something remotely like. What Douglas -- has been doing for graphic novels and comic books. And -- what Alex Ross has been doing for composed music."

" What do you think it was the key note. Of your personality as a poet."

" I can't answer you've done a question I can't answer it on the last person who would know."

" Or you know Steve -- he writes."

" that are. Clearly unlike one another."

" And yet. All thoughtful and all sounds like him --"

" quality do you love it upon yours or somebody else's."

" 11 quality. I hate along this I am I am I believe I'm I'm quoting if not I'm paraphrasing held them there and saying this. Always want to be on lake one another. Polls can be said you want anything. They want to do something memorable and asked acting and emotionally resonant that has not quite been done before. Ends. What I look for. First and most. In new homes. Is this sense that they're doing something that has not already been done them. I made it look for other things I prefer it all else being equal. I seek often representations of of responsibility. Or practicality or self limitation. Partly because the recent past has had so many representations. Of a wild -- Venus. Or abandon. But I certainly love Pulitzer represented abandon and and while studying this and Ecstasy and visionary innocent ruled it out."

" your motto. I'm not sure. That may -- about."

" thank you so much I've enjoyed your criticism I love listening to your portrait there's been a lot of fun. It at stake you so much. Paul McCarthy edited this conversation -- Thanks to the -- of torture bookshop and Harvard Square from making a recording studio and historic. Also to the Massachusetts -- festival for helping us roundup of bullets. Thank you to listeners especially if you leave a comment where your own palm or your favorite Paul. At our website radio open -- dot org. I'm Christopher left."