Whom and What to Read to Make You Like Poetry (and Also Sci-Fi) Stephen Burt, the Harvard professor and poet whom I wrote about in Sunday's Education Issue, is a fanboy and an evangelist of poetry. As I wrote in the magazine, Burt defends his positivity by saying, "There's so little airtime available for any poetry these days that when I get space and time in which I can do whatever I want, I don't want to say, 'X sucks.' I almost always prefer to say, 'Please check out Y,' or 'Z isn't what you think,' or 'Look at what A, B and C have in common.'  If Burt's enthusiasm doesn't inspire you to read poetry, one of his many brilliant peers might. To begin, I recommend the brave, swashbuckling writing of David Orr, who writes the On Poetry column for The Times Book Review (and who is my friend). The reviews of Dan Chiasson, who was my colleague when I taught at Wellesley, always seem to teach me something interesting about the history of 20th-century poetry. I respect, even if I don't share, the temperamental conservatism of Adam Kirsch. Several poets have told me I must read more Maureen McLane; people who love McLane really love McLane. She has a new book out, as it happens. Ange Mlinko seems to have many fans. One interesting note about the critics above: they all write their own poetry too. In this sense, they emulate poets like T.S. Eliot (a favorite of Kirsch's), Randall Jarrell (a favorite of Burt's), W.H. Auden and many more. They aspire to be poet-critics, to make poetry worth writing about and to write about poetry worth making. For the general reader interested in visiting the world where all these poet-critics live, I recommend a recent issue of Virginia Quarterly Review devoted to the American poetry scene. Here you'll find a lot of new poems, but even better, you will find essays that explain, at ample length, what's going on in American poetry today. You will emerge from these essays excitedly confused, eager to stumble on. On an unrelated note, some of you may have been intrigued by how Burt's interest in science fiction led him to poetry. I was, and I asked him what sci-fi he recommends. Below you can find what he wrote back, after issuing this caveat: "Note that these are current most admired authors and single works, not the same list as 'what I liked in 1984,' though there is overlap. Most of them are authors whose work I teach. James Tiptree Jr., generally (pseudonym for Alice Sheldon, who also wrote as Raccoona Sheldon) John Crowley: "Engine Summer" (which is btw where David Mitchell got some of the devices that have made him eminent) Ted Chiang H. G. Wells Philip Pullman, his "Dark Materials" trilogy (just like half the rest of the planet - I've written about it a couple of times) Greg Egan, "Oceanic" (this is not a general Greg Egan recommendation) Carla Speed McNeill, "Finder" (this is a multivolume series of sf comics & graphic novels) I've lately become very interested in Jeff Noon's Internet-based science-fictional short forms. Some use Twitter. I'm going to try to teach them this fall, which I've never done before - never taught anything online-interactive-new-media before, in fact, though I know people who teach those sorts of forms all the time. Raphael Carter, "The Fortunate Fall" China Miéville, "Embassytown" People like me are supposed to like Samuel R. Delany tremendously: I like him, but this side of idolatry. I recommend the short stories collected in "Driftglass" and the short novel "Nova." Could that be enough? A shorter list would be Tiptree, Tiptree, Tiptree.