Advice from the Lights: Poems | Stephen Burt
Stephen is sometimes Stephanie and sometimes wonders how his past and her past are their own collective memory Advice from the Lights is a brilliant and candid exploration of gender and identity and a series of looks at a formative past. Its part nostalgia, part confusion, and part an ongoing wondering: How do any of us achieve adulthood? And why would we want to, if we had the choice? This collection is woven from and interrupted by extraordinary sequences, including Stephanie poems about Stephens female self; poems on particular years of the poets early life, each with its own memories, desires, insecurities, and pop songs; and versions of poems by the Greek poet Callimachus, whose present-day incarnation worries (who doesnt?) about mortality, the favor of the gods, and the career of Taylor Swift. The collection also includes poems on politics, location, and parenthood. Taken all together, this is Stephen Burts most personal and most accomplished collection, an essential work that asks who we are, how we become ourselves, and why we make art.
Advice from the Lights: Poems |