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A Conversation on Poetry Criticism
June 26 @ 6:00 pm
Event Video
Three of the most accomplished poetry critics today, Stephanie Burt, Anahid Nersessian, and David Orr, discuss being a poetry critic, the state of poetry criticism, and the pleasures and practicalities of becoming such a critic now. NBCC President Adam Dalva introduces the panel, and NBCC board members Rebecca Morgan Frank and David Woo serve as moderaters.
Stephanie Burt is the author of fourteen books of poetry and literary criticism, including Super Gay Poems and Don’t Read Poetry. A past judge for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, she served as a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, Raritan, and other publications. She is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University.
Anahid Nersessian was born and raised in New York City. She is the author of three books—Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse (Verso, 2022; U of Chicago P, 2021), The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life (Chicago, 2020), and Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment (Harvard UP, 2015)—and is currently writing a book called How to Have Sex in a Poem, under contract with FSG. The former poetry editor of Granta magazine, she is also a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, New Left Review, n+1, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review, Bidoun, Poetry Magazine, Mousse and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is a professor in the Department of English at UCLA.
David Orr is Professor of Poetry and the Practice of Criticism at Rutgers University and a longtime poetry critic for the New York Times Book Review, among other publications. His first book, Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry, was named one of the twenty best books of 2011 by the Chicago Tribune; his subsequent books have been covered in outlets ranging from The Wall Street Journal to NPR to PBS NewsHour. He is the winner of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle and the Editor’s Prize for Reviewing from Poetry magazine. A native South Carolinian, David lives Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife and daughter.