Advice from the Lights

Poet and critic Burt (The Poem Is You) diagnoses feelings of alienation and its possible antidotes in this touching portrait series of self and family. The sensation of being “not at home anywhere” motivates a search for home everywhere. A remarkable imagination allows Burt (who also goes by Steph or Stephanie, and uses the pronoun they) to convincingly identify with an array of different figures: princess, stowaway, kite, and water strider, to name a few. The various self-portraits prove that, if nowhere else, Burt is at home in the space of a poem—in the “song/ that does not sound, to outsiders, like music at all.” Within such a space, Burt demonstrates aptitude with the classical poet’s tools: rhyme, alliteration, nuanced enjambment, homophones, and more. Crucially, they are comfortable with what poems can help readers work toward: “wish-fulfillment// is the hidden/ goal of every poem,/ except when it is the obvious/ goal, in which case the hidden/ goal is something like learn/ how to live in this world.” These poems achieve something rare, helping readers to “learn/ how to live in this world” more attentively. And, sensitive to the rigors of living in a body, moment, or world that can so often feel alien, Burt shares some additional advice: “Please, everybody alive,/ do your best to stay that way.” [em]Agent: Matt McGowan, Francis Goldin Literary. (Oct.) [/em]