Stephen Burt's Poems

According to Stephen Burt, poems work by combining words into patterns intended to evoke emotion in their readers. Poetry is an attempt, according to Burt, to make people “happier, sadder, and more alive” (citation). The word poem, in the original Greek, just means ‘something made.’ Of its many functions, perhaps the most important function is helping people to make sense of themselves and the world around them, including troubling concepts such as death. Stephen Burt spoke of his difficulty processing abstract thoughts and feelings without putting them into words. Poetry exists, at least in part, to serve this very purpose.

It seems that Burt’s stance on whether there is a correct interpretation of most poems is that the ‘correct’ interpretation