Michael Burkard


Michael Paul Burkard was an American poet and educator, who was an Associate Professor in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at Syracuse University, and the author of at least ten volumes of poetry.

Life and career

Burkard graduated from Hobart College in 1968 and from the Iowa Writers' Workshop with an MFA in 1973. He taught at Kirkland College and Sarah Lawrence College. In the years between 1968 and 1973, Burkard spent more than 2 years as a psychiatric aide in a hospital. He has stated that the latter experience was very important to his development and career as a poet.
Before joining the faculty at Syracuse University beginning in 1997, Burkard was a visiting writer at New York University and the University of Louisville, as well as a writer-in-residence at Austin Peay State University.
During his lifetime, hundreds of Burkard's poems appeared in many publications, including American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, APR, Ironwood and Quarterly West, to name just a few. His poems were included in The Best American Poetry anthology four times.
Burkard also self-published two books of his drawings: Michael Burkard and a flower with milk in a shadow beside it.
Burkard died on December 23, 2024, at the age of 77.

Critical reception

Book reviews have noted that various poets have influenced Burkard. A retrospective analysis of Burkard's poetry following the publication of his selected and "uncollected" poems in 2008, noted the influence of Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Wallace Stevens, and Tomas Tranströmer. Some of the critical analysis places him in various poetic legacies and lineages, including Surrealism and The New American Poetry.
Burkard's poetics have been described differently over the years. In the 1970s, the content of his poetry took the form of the "narrative autobiographical poem". Later on, by the decade of the 2000s, the Harvard Review says, Burkard's work was "invested in a metaphysics of relationship, probing into how we treat each other."
Other reviewers from the same time period also noted that where Burkard goes wrong is when he reverts to a style of "simple Confessionalism," even while the best of them "break from reality and American lyrical status quo to offer timeless, elegant revelations." Kirkus Reviews pointed out that at times, Burkard's late style was of "uneven quality" but that "a connection to Burkard's work, once established, is worth the effort expended."

Awards

*