Read the Room: Poems [9781644454503]

Overview

A vociferous new collection that meets our queer and divisive moment by Stephanie Burt, “a poet of dazzling skill, mystical vision, wild imagination, sensual intuition” (Laura Kasischke)

Stephanie Burt’s Read the Room asks how we care for one another and how we can stay vigilant as a society changes—or crumbles—around us. Can poetry as we know it—and as previous generations knew it—help us get through a fraught time? Can demanding and ancient forms stay relevant now? Can contemporary poetry remain in some ways traditional and yet welcome Star Trek, the Eras tour, trans joy, and TikTok?

Read the Room takes in the mess of the current moment, looks back at shared histories, and looks again at the art, science fiction, and fantasy that can protect or rescue us from the real world. Burt’s infectious curiosity goes seemingly everywhere—across the country, abroad, into imagined realms, and into her own backyard—as she brings along her polyamorous loves, her comic books, and her up-to-the-minute life online.

In a brilliant array of forms and speakers, this is a book for and about communities striving to make a future better than the present and drawing on the past.