Stephanie Burt
Stephanie Burt is a literary critic and poet. She is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University.[1] The New York Times said that she is "one of the most influential poetry critics of [her] generation".[2][3] She grew up near Washington D.C. She has published various collections of poetry and a large amount of literary criticism and research.[4] Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The London Review of Books, and other publications.[5][6]
Stephanie Burt
1971 (age 52–53)
English
American
Literary criticism
Poetry
Randall Jarrell and His Age
"The New Things"
"Elliptical poetry"
Jessie Bennett
2
Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English
Randall Jarrell and His Age (2000)
Langdon Hammer
English
Poetry
Literary criticism: new categories of contemporary poetry[edit]
Elliptical poetry[edit]
Burt received quite a bit of attention when she created the term "elliptical poetry" in a 1998 book review of Susan Wheeler's book Smokes in Boston Review magazine:
Writings[edit]
In addition to her essays for the Boston Review, Burt has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Poetry Review, Slate, The Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, and the Yale Review.
Burt has a particular interest in the work of the poet/critic Randall Jarrell; her book Randall Jarrell and His Age reevaluates Jarrell's importance as a poet. The book won the Warren-Brooks Award in 2002. In explaining the aim of the book, Burt said, "Many readers know Jarrell as the author of several anthology poems (for example, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"), a charming book or two for children, and a panoply of influential reviews. This book aims to illuminate a Jarrell more ambitious, more complex, and more important than that."[10] In 2005, she also edited Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden, a collection of Jarrell's critical essays.
In addition to writing about poets and poetry, Burt has published four books of her own poetry, Popular Music (1999), which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry, Parallel Play (2006), Belmont (2013), and Advice From The Lights (2017).
On occasion, she has been known to write for a popular audience on Slate and also for The New Yorker, including an article about X-Men: Days of Future Past in the voice of Kitty Pryde.[11]
Career[edit]
Burt earned a B.A. from Harvard University in 1994 and a PhD from Yale University in 2000 before joining the faculty at Macalester College from 2000 to 2007. Since 2007, she has worked at Harvard; she became a tenured professor in 2010. In 2023, she was named the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English. She is transgender, and in 2017, she transitioned to presenting female.[12] She has since been active in LGBTQA+ rights and awareness campaigns.[13]