In Don't Read Poetry, award winning poet and literary critic Stephanie Burt offers an accessible introduction to the seemingly daunting task of reading, understanding, and appreciating poetry. She dispels preconceptions about poetry, explains how poems speak to one another, and how they can speak to our lives. It shows readers how to find more poems once they have some poems they like, and how to connect the poetry of the past to poetry of the present. Unlike other guides, Burt does not approach poetry chronologically, or by school, form, or poet. Instead, her book moves through six reasons to read poetry. These include 'feeling and attitude,' or how poems can embody, reflect, and share emotions, and 'difficulty and frustration,' or how poets present us with problems and let us see the world anew. Each chapter explores the theme through the works of various poets and their histories. Burt moves seamlessly from the 'classics' - Sappho, Wordsworth, Plath &c - to poetry circulated in
