Honestly, i tried to read this book several times but I could never get myself to read very far. I found it boring and convoluted and rambling. It could have been a much shorter essay.

The jist of it is, there is no right or wrong way to read and enjoy poetry. Poetry is a medium not a genre, you should explore and read and find what you like, what speaks to you, etc.

Maybe the writer has something deeply profound or meaningful to say later on in the book but I'll never really know. Take this review with a grain of salt since I didn't read much at all.

Dnf at 20%

Received an e arc from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Approachable, readable and fun. Also really enlightening! I've been recommending it to my students, and reading quotes in class. Because this book demystifies 'poetry' and reminds us that it's actually as much fun, and as emotionally satisfying, as music and fiction. A fab addition to my library!

Thank you Perseus Books and Netgalley for this ARC.

I haven’t read much poetry since high school and over the past year or two I have been trying to read different forms as part of my reading habit. This book was perfectly timed for me. I have always shied away from poetry, but this helped me understand it’s forms and some it’s functions. I truly appreciate the time taken by Stephanie Burt to explain these in her book and I truly hope that the result it a lot more people enjoying poetry as part of their reading experience.

Before this book, I really only felt comfortable reading certain kinds of poetry and certain poets. The rest felt intimidating and foreign. After this book, I feel more comfortable reading outside my usual poets and have a better understanding of what I don’t understand, and what I am not meant to understand. I am no longer forcing things into the wrong boxes.

I picked up Stephanie Burt’s new book, “Don’t Read Poetry” hoping to come to a better appreciation for and understanding of modern poetry, and it didn’t disappoint. Organizing the book into six chapters on poems of feelings, characters, forms, difficulty, wisdom and community, Burt takes the reader on a tour through poetry, from the most ancient extant verse to experimental modern forms on Tumblr. Throughout, she illustrates each category with plentiful examples followed by her own close readings of these poems; I enjoyed revisiting favorites from Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats and Dickinson as well as being introduced to new-to-me poets like Carrie Etter, Louise Glück and Dana Levin, and new forms such as the “Golden Shovel” and the OULIPO group. I can’t say that I’ll now be able to understand and analyze poetry with anywhere near Burt’s skill—in fact I can say for sure that I won’t because I was constantly amazed by her insights and ideas—but “Don’t Read Poetry” has given me some of the tools I’ll need to try and so many suggestions for collections and poets to start with.

Thank you to NetGalley and Basic Books for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

Disclosure: Stephanie is a good friend and one of the smartest people I know. The conceit of the title is: don’t read poetry, read poems, which “are like pieces of music: by definition they all have something in common, but they vary widely in how they work, where they come from, and what they try to do.” One thing vital to the poetic project is the arrangement of language “to convey, share, or provoke emotions,” along with whatever else a poem does. Poems can also introduce us to characters, interest us with the play of their technique, and/or teach wisdom; Burt argues that you should look for poems that you find interesting, or beautiful, or provocative, or whatever. So, for example, lyric poems are about communicating across the divide of personhood: as Hera Lindsay Bird writes, a lyric poem can say “There is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me.” Lyric poems are the realm of mirrors, and windows, and both at once: they’re about seeing “both outside yourself and into yourself.”

By (partial) contrast, poems of character “are like people we could meet, and so it is no wonder that they so often compare themselves to portraits, photographs, paintings.” Poems as technique/form are “games that poets can play.” Understanding when and why the poet succeeds at her game (what Burt describes as “formal excellence combined with creativity”) is aided by recognizing how rhyme and rhyme-like euphonies work, but rhyme doesn’t have to be a part of it. Burt defends poems that don’t make consistent sense: “opaque or resistant language can instruct and delight, and … some non-or anti-sense in poetry can help us spot nonsense, or hypocrisy, or lies, in the rest of the world, outside poems.” This is one way that poems may share wisdom with us: calling us to recognize “either the injustice or the beauty that we would otherwise overlook. The goal of making the world weird again, either to like it more or to help it change,” can itself be wisdom, along with more conventional

Burt's expertise shines in this book, and it is a fine thing to see her mind at work. Although the book is directed toward the uninitiated, I found myself (a reader with a PhD in poetry) highlighting passages constantly, looking at old, familiar texts with new vision and clarity. I am familiar with Stephanie Burt by reputation, but this was the first of her books that I've read, and it won't be the last. I was delighted by the fresh pairings she selected for her examples, highlighting areas of virtuosity in canonical selections alongside contemporary poems by poets like Natalie Eilbert and Danez Smith. Burt breaks down the different approaches and formal variations in poetry that can make the genre seem impermeable and exclusive, demystifying the poems and letting some light in to welcome readers of all stripes. I heartily recommend this book.

Burt provides an intriguing primer on poetry for those who are just discovering the art. She states that this is not a book for those looking for justification of popular poetry, but it is a book that helps one navigate through the many types of poetry. Burt uses well-known poets of different eras like O'Hara, Shelly, Byron, and Frost as well as a host of other lesser known poets. The exploration of poetry leads to the (human) commonality of many types and eras as well as differences in style.

It's not uncommon to like on poet and not another even if they are in the same period and style. It can go even farther, for example, I like Shelly's lyrical poems but don't care much for his narrative ones. Even in the different styles of poetry that confine its structure, there are variations that poets use to construct their writing. Langston Hughes reinvented the folk quatrain. Phillis Wheatley, the first published African- American poet in the late 18th century, reinvented the freestanding couplet. Both took the rules and made them their own.

Poetry also teaches about the poets. The example of Willam Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy are used as an example (and sheds some light on the cover art of this book). Many times poets are thought to be stiff and formal, but poets like Byron shatter that idea with the epic poem Don Juan. One of my favorite lines from the poem:

In the case our Lord the King should go to war again,
He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress—or a nunnery

Byron keeps to a rhyme scheme and even included an ottava rima, a complex structure used originally in heroic Italian poems, but here it is used for a different sort of "hero." Byron uses the strict form to create a farce of ivory tower poetry. 

Poetry ranges from the easy to understand to the very difficult.  Tiny Buttons by Gertrude Stein is used as a popular example.  There is so much that a collection, of seemingly incoherent words, can build. Other poets are even more complicated.  It took me over a year to get through and somewhat understand Eric Linsker's La Far.  

Burt writes for those who have seen a spark of poetry -- maybe a quote in a movie,  or a bit of Walt Whitman in a Levis commercial, or even a poster on a commuter train.  Something that grabbed a person's attention and left him or her wanting more.  Burt will be the curious readers Virgil through the levels of poetry.  

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Stephanie Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor. In 2012, the New York Times called Burt “one of the most influential poetry critics of [her] generation.” Burt grew up around Washington, DC and earned a BA from Harvard and PhD from Yale. She has published four collections of poems: Advice from the Lights (2017), Belmont (2013), Parallel Play (2006), and Popular Music (1999).

DON'T READ POETRY is a careful and detailed explication of the genre: what poetry is, how to successfully react to it, how to comprehend it, how to find poetry we like. I recommend reading it a chapter/section at a time, letting both the author and the included poem segments speak to you. Look up the poets and sample their work. Follow what inspires you. Read Poetry more widely than before. Revel in Poetry.

Don’t Read Poetry feels like a written long-form lecture from your favorite English professor, hip and approachable but still hoping you’ll learn something. It took me longer to read than expected because I found myself making reading lists – I wish it came with a textbook of all these poems in their full forms!

My e-reader copy was not formatted perfectly, and sometimes it was hard to follow. I’d recommend checking how the book is formatted on your e-reader by downloading a sample before purchasing. I think I’d rather have had a hard copy of this book for easy reference as well!

I felt that I sucked at reading poetry; as I would read, even at a snail's pace, I was convinced that I was missing some larger point entirely, wholly disrespecting the author's work like a dog gnawing on bones at an archaeological dig.

While I can't say that I'm completely prepared to take on even a quarter of the poetry out there (I should be clear that Burt doesn't certify that this book is a Rosetta Stone for understanding all poems past this read), I guarantee that I'm looking at these works differently. Instead of being intimidated at never seeing some lofty theme that probably requires some level of context, I can approach it and read it for what it is: art, expression, to be perceived by the reader and thought upon.

Burt likens poems to famous songs, wherein each of us might like it a teensy bit less than the other, have tied to it some memory or level of sentimentality, or maybe the song spoke to us at a unique point in our lives; through this lens, a reader can figuratively let their hair down, becoming a little more receptive and serving as a better audience for the author's message, whatever that might be.

You'll be introduced to a wide array of poems spanning across centuries, style, and subject matter; the numerous dissections of works certainly helps to present key concepts to keep an eye out for.

Think of this as a book meant to help you get in the right frame of mind, and not some work lined with if-then statements.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Perseus Books, and Basic Books for the advance read.

Great read this was a wonderful book. Each page helped me in understanding what poetry is all about. Poetry was very well explained. I we enjoyed every page. Thank you NetGalley for the Advance Reader Copy in exchange for my honest review.

Author and teacher Stephanie Burt examines poetry deeply and with thoughtful affection in this book. As a long-time reader and writer of poetry, including research-based poetry, I found this book to be insightful. A text I would gladly share with others and encourage teachers, students, and writers to read.