A Barren Orange Tree

Stephen Burt is Associate Professor of English at Harvard. His books of poems are Parallel Play (2006) and Popular Music (1999); his books of literary criticism and scholarship include Close Calls with Nonsense (2009), The Forms of Youth (2007) and Randall Jarrell and His Age (2002). He writes about poetry regularly for Boston Review, London Review of Books, PN Review, and other journals in Britain and America. (updated 6/2009)