Advice from the Lights: Poems

by Stephanie Burt

Overview

“The brightest and most inviting of Burt’s collections for readers of any, all, and no genders.”—Boston Review

Advice from the Lights is a brilliant and candid exploration of gender and identity and a series of looks at a formative past. It’s 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 Stephen’s female self; poems on particular years of the poet’s 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 doesn’t?) 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 Burt’s most personal and most accomplished collection, an essential work that asks who we are, how we become ourselves, and why we make art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555977894
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her previous books of poetry and literary criticism include Belmont and Close Calls with Nonsense, as well as Don't Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

My 1979

I was Mr. Spock being raised by Dr. Spock.
I would have trusted my instincts if I had any,
By wearing them over and over without socks I let my one pair of gold tennis shoes fall apart.
I had become convinced that character was fate.
Hermit Crab

That shell is pretty, but that shell is too small for me.

Each home is a hideout; each home is a secret; each home is a getaway under the same hot lamp, a means to a lateral move at low velocity.

I live in a room in the room of a boy I barely see.

Sometimes the boy and his talkative friends raise too-warm hands and try to set me free

and I retreat into myself, hoping they place me back in my terrarium, and they do, with disappointed alacrity.

Scatter patterns in sand, adnates, cancellates, gaping whelk husks, a toy tractor-trailer, cracked and dinged, beside the spine of a plastic tree,

the helmet-shaped shelter of a shadow cast by a not-quite-buried wedge of pottery ...

if I have a body that's wholly my own then it isn't mine. For a while I was protected by what I pretended to be.

Princess Stephanie

To be delicate, to be too big for the helpless, too little and too important

To have to say: help me out of this tulle dress

I know how to kiss but not how to do this slow dance

What use is the adult world? It doesn't have unicorns

Why can't I wear two different colored shoes?

A Covered Bridge in Littleton, New Hampshire

I can remember when I wanted X more than anything ever-for X fill in from your own childhood

[balloon, pencil lead, trading card, shoelaces, a bow or not to have to wear a bow]

and now I am moved to action, when I am moved,
The point is to be, in your own eyes, what you are,

or to keep your own tools, so that you can pretend.

And so it was no surprise,
That morning, needing a nap,
My 1980

It was now my younger brothers who had philosophical objections to taking a bath.

After I came back from the optician,
erasers' edges, girls' clean fingernails,
but evident in separate outlines, sad as Atari pixels with their 8-bit math.

I had not the means but the active imagination-
into the Earth's hot mantle in a box-elder-bug-shaped burrowing ironclad.

I was the stowaway on an Edwardian liner who knew what the locket's ancient pictographs meant,

thanks to my prior study of Egyptology,
I was also the unaccompanied minor afraid to look down, or out at the Atlantic,

as we began our rickety descent toward Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

I thought of myself as omniscient, as ichthyomantic.
in sea-floor adventures, a Nebula-winning tetralogy,
Over Sacramento

The sky is platinum blonde,
One part of bad news,
one line of will and must, of take what you get,
Please, everybody alive,
brought down to this Earth by Scott Miller of Sacramento and Davis, CA: the author, while there,
of "I've Tried Subtlety," the least subtle among his disgruntled effects, and of "Aerodeliria,"
intuitive puns or unfolded misconceptions,
as of today
Kites

  Complete in ourselves,
our mothers and one another our owners'
  until we became intertwined, which is why you try
One of us is a gossamer pirate ship,
  sunset highlights, sail by oblong sail.
a ligature, a propeller, a fat lip.
  whose modes of coagulation and cohabitation none of the human pedestrians understand,

we take off on our almost arbitrarily
  toward the unattainable, scarily lofty realm of hawk and albatross
  It seems to be up to you to keep us
Swans at a Pond by JFK Airport

  resemble cranes,
  a nest as big as a sleeping adult human being. No rest

  accrues to the weary, if the weary are or expect to be parents; but no blues,

  no keening, no jeremiads are in order, just advice they won't hear: take it slow;

  try, at least, to make plans you won't have to keep: you, too, will cry.

  Futurity appears here as several bits of mess: split sticks, dull loot

  our trenches leave,
  source that some of us find in recycling, as if we could rescue a watershed by collating apple cores,

  as if goodness were easy to recognize, and the way to tell eros from caritas

  elementary.
  whose work confines itself to the under-studied and overlooked, further reports would only confuse

  us who travel in such exhausting, overbearing vehicles, and make ourselves ridiculous

  thereby. It is not we who own the air.

To the Naked Mole Rats at the National Zoo

Bucktoothed and semitransparent, pretty to no one,
My 1981

Everyone's younger sibling was still in a stroller,
to our beige, orange, and air-conditioned kitchens,
Everyone's dad was a lawyer, or else in government service.
I had one friend who was actually my friend:
He knew about BMXes, and how to surf,
of the bold, law-abiding, wisecracking police.
After his friends' older friends TP'd the split-level houses beside our own, rain turned their thinning banners the color of sunburnt, crumpled American cash.

Inside Outside Stephanie

1

I made myself. Mommy and Daddy were proud, in that order.
2

There was a snowstorm that lasted three days and a cavern of monochrome memory. There were board games, and a
3

O grapefruit (as color and flavor). O never quite rightly tied laces. O look,
the shadow of a tarp, like a sail between sailors and thin swings that make no decision, like weather vanes.

O think of the lost Chuck Taylors. The lost Mary Janes.

Scarlet, a Betta

for Amanda Schaffer

I'm really bright blue. I keep going back and forth between trying to live up to my name and following my reflection, or my nature.

I know no east, no north,
I reserve my love for holy Ariel,
All the colors I recognize are alive in the pebbles at the bottom of my tank.
Roly-Poly Bug

Non serviam

Because I can't ever appear as I would like to appear,
I named myself after a pill but it didn't help. I liked the feeling of feeling small,

as long as it let me feel mobile; I wanted to roll up and down and around the tiny hall

of a groove in discarded cardboard. I used to appall my peers with risky behavior. I might fall

to my death in a half-inch ditch full of oil or lawnmower grease. I stall

at the brush of a fingertip. I'm so afraid of a grand faux pas that I answer the most banal

questions by quoting the questioner, so as to let his words shield mine. I cover my anger imperfectly, so I can breathe

with my head between my ten legs; I am my own backyard slat fence, my own slate garden wall.

I am chitin and ichor inside, but I'll never let on how I look underneath. I could always make something else of myself. I could be having a ball.

CHAPTER 2

After Callimachus

So reactionaries and radicals complain
Palinode with Playmobil Figurines

They do not move. They cannot bend their knees.
Their niece, with her persimmon bowl cut, never flees her own maple-strewn backyard; she will never steal the breeches from a stranger's line, nor find camaraderie and peril upon the high seas.
None of them know how low the imagination recedes,
My 1982

I had a future in the dark.
I had to stop to pee, pull up my pants,
At home, I kept trying and failing to play piano parts for "Roundabout" and "Long Distance Runaround,"
I wanted to sing about c, about optimization,
Fifth Grade Time Capsule

Having given the sun and school
  By that point everything I have kept between my boards, in my polyurethane seal,
as evidence from another age:
  a jadeite earring, the Boston Globe, and a scallop-
I know I am too young to date.
  or even a buried life, I dream of the day when I am decoded and vaunted, of a floral float in a parade
The people who pick me up can never be
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Advice from the Lights"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Stephen Burt.
Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Ice for the Ice Trade,
1,
My 1979,
Hermit Crab,
Princess Stephanie,
A Covered Bridge in Littleton, New Hampshire,
My 1980,
Over Sacramento,
Kites,
Swans at a Pond by JFK Airport,
To the Naked Mole Rats at the National Zoo,
My 1981,
Inside Outside Stephanie,
Scarlet, a Betta,
Roly-Poly Bug,
2,
After Callimachus (So reactionaries ...),
Palinode with Playmobil Figurines,
My 1982,
Fifth Grade Time Capsule,
Cloud Studies,
My 1983,
Black Raspberry Canes,
First Kiss Stephanie,
Taboos at Twelve,
Esprit Stephanie,
After Callimachus (Half of me ...),
The Cars' Greatest Hits,
Mean Girls,
3,
My 1985,
Fairy Story Stephanie,
Herring Gull,
Electrical Flora,
My 1986,
Water Strider,
Gymnastics Stephanie,
Cicadas,
My 1987,
School Smoking Lounge Stephanie,
Palinode with Study Guide, Spackling Knife, and Sewing Kit,
After Callimachus (Why do I write?),
Sadder,
A Nickel on Top of a Penny,
4,
Advice from the Lights,
Anubis,
Paper Stephanie,
Helium,
A Crime at Pattaya,
The Sun Rising,
Royal Botanical,
Pastorale,
Advice or Prayer for Airports,
Indian Stream Republic,
Écossaise,
Spoken for a Pair of Ferrets,
After Callimachus (It's hard work ...),
5,
Tiara Stephanie,
Secondhand Flashlight,
Creative Writing,
Final Exam Stephanie,
Advice for Holding Together,
Tourmalines,
Washingtonian,
Advice from Rock Creek Park,
Suspense,
December 2016,
Resolved,
Fuzzy Golem Doll with 6" Keychain,
Concord Grapes,
White Lobelia,
Notes,
Acknowledgments,

Editorial Reviews

09/18/2017
Poet and critic Burt (The Poem Is You) diagnoses feelings of alienation and its possible antidotes in this touching portrait series of self and family. The sensation of being “not at home anywhere” motivates a search for home everywhere. A remarkable imagination allows Burt (who also goes by Steph or Stephanie, and uses the pronoun they) to convincingly identify with an array of different figures: princess, stowaway, kite, and water strider, to name a few. The various self-portraits prove that, if nowhere else, Burt is at home in the space of a poem—in the “song/ that does not sound, to outsiders, like music at all.” Within such a space, Burt demonstrates aptitude with the classical poet’s tools: rhyme, alliteration, nuanced enjambment, homophones, and more. Crucially, they are comfortable with what poems can help readers work toward: “wish-fulfillment// is the hidden/ goal of every poem,/ except when it is the obvious/ goal, in which case the hidden/ goal is something like learn/ how to live in this world.” These poems achieve something rare, helping readers to “learn/ how to live in this world” more attentively. And, sensitive to the rigors of living in a body, moment, or world that can so often feel alien, Burt shares some additional advice: “Please, everybody alive,/ do your best to stay that way.” Agent: Matt McGowan, Francis Goldin Literary. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Advice From the Lights triumphs at its most plainspoken, in the thrilling sequence of ‘Stephanie’ poems, their speakers curious and playful. . . . The collection’s self-scrutiny is sometimes painful but rendered with formal grace, often with the satisfaction of rhyme. Burt’s intricate poems enact an experience of yearning that is emotional and also political.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“For all its insights into trans experience, Advice from the Lights is the brightest and most inviting of Burt’s collections for readers of any, all, and no genders.”—Boston Review

“Burt’s year-by-year cataloging gives Advice from the Lights an immediacy within its nostalgia, a compelling ars poetica of self.”—The Millions

“Deft, bubbly, poised, polished, consistently witty, affecting an air of light verse, very composed. . . . I am sure those readers who already admire her work will enjoy Advice From The Lights hugely. But I also think this book has the potential to speak movingly to a trans audience, and I hope it finds one.”—Lambda Literary

“Curiously and courageously, Burt keeps saving us by making poems that are small cultural changes. . . . Poems about the speaker’s young years are funny and sweet even though Burt is always making a fist—but don’t be scared—when it opens only magic silk scarves and white doves fly out.”—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Advice from the Lights deftly explores gender and self.”—Largehearted Boy

“Burt mines a nearly limitless store of empathy, lending voices to living things and inanimate objects alike. . . . Burt’s poems are never less than compassionate.”—Library Journal, starred review

“[A] touching portrait series of self and family. . . . A remarkable imagination allows Burt . . . to convincingly identify with an array of different figures. . . . Burt demonstrates aptitude with the classical poet’s tools. . . . These poems achieve something rare, helping readers to ‘learn/how to live in this world’ more attentively.”—Publishers Weekly

“A book of tremendous intricacy and the best kind of recurrent music. Strung throughout are several separate yet converging poetic sequences, exploring what it means to come of age while inhabiting multiple genders and multiple selves.”—Natalie Shapero

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2017
As in 2013's Belmont, Burt mines a nearly limitless store of empathy, lending voices to living things and inanimate objects alike, from anxious kites to wrestling ferrets ("Our arguments/ are circular:/ we love to writhe,/ to form a wreath/ or flare and tie/ ourselves in knots"). More than exhibitions of creative ventriloquism, these poems aspire to be lessons toward the realization of personal identity: "The point is to be, in your own eyes, what you are," which in Burt's case is an accomplished poet and critic whose own consciousness gracefully reconciles male (Stephen) and female (Stephanie) gender identities. Among Burt's performative voicings one finds childhood intimations of difference ("Taboos at Twelve"), pop cultural memoirs ("The Cars' Greatest Hits"), and poems spoken in the voice of Stephanie ("What if I had a side you could not see?"), all offering evidence that selfhood and transformation are often inseparable. VERDICT Burt's poems are never less than compassionate, and—with rare exceptions, such as the obliquely political "2016"—they are positive and affirming, answering Stephanie's "Why can't I wear two different colored shoes?" with a confident "But you can."—Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY

Library Journal