Stephen Burt

Stephen Burt is a literary critic, poet and a professor, who teaches at Harvard University. The New York Times has called him "one of the most influential poetry critics of his generation."

Literary-critical work: new categories of contemporary poetry

Elliptical poetry

Burt received significant attention for coining the term "elliptical poetry" in a 1998 book review of Susan Wheeler's book Smokes in Boston Review magazine. This is how Burt defines the elliptical poet:

Burt also adds that Elliptical poets are "good at describing information overload." In addition to calling the subject of Burt's review, Susan Wheeler, an important elliptical poet, Burt also lists Liam Rector's The Sorrow of Architecture (1984), Lucie Brock-Broido's The Master Letters (1995), Mark Ford's Landlocked (1992), and Mark Levine's debut, Debt (1993) as "some groundbreaking and definitively Elliptical books."

The New Thing

In 2009, Burt wrote an essay called "The New Things" in which he invented a new category of American contemporary poets, which he calls "The New Thing." Burt explains that these poets derive their new style from the likes of William Carlos Williams, Robert Creeley, Gertrude Stein and George Oppen. This is how Burt loosely defines "The New Thing" poets: