Burns, Gerald

Biography

Gerald Burns was born in 1940 in Detroit, Michigan. He was educated at Harvard, Trinity College (Dublin), and taught at Southern Methodist University and New York University. In 1975 Burns moved to Dallas. In 1985, he was awarded an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship for poetry. In addition to practicing as an amateur conjurer in his spare time, Burns is an artist. He has illustrated several of his own books as well as designed many of their covers (most notably, BOCCHERINI'S MINUET and PROSE).

Burns' books include: LAUGHTER IN THE GALLERY (1966), a book of light verse and the nucleus of the unpublished SONNETS FROM THE MIDDLE ENGLISH; BOCCHERINI'S MINUET (1972); THE MYTH OF ACCIDENCE (ca. 1973); A BOOK OF SPELLS (1975); LETTERS TO OBSCURE MEN (1979); TOWARD A PHENOMENOLOGY OF WRITTEN ART (1979); PROSE (1982); A THING ABOUT LANGUAGE (1989); and SHORTER POEMS (1993), which was the winner of the 1992 National Series Poetry Competition. In addition to his poetry and prose volumes, Burns has also published widely in magazines such as: "The Southwest Review", "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E", "American Poetry Review", "Another Chicago Magazine", "Exquisite Corpse", "Fine Madness", "Temblor", "Sagetrieb", "Dallas Arts Review", and "Harvard Magazine".

Burns is considered a leading practitioner of long-lined, thickly-textured verse. His wide reading and close observation of a panoramic range of subjects allows his poetry to bridge formal and expressive gaps between the 19th- century Romantics, early 20th-century Modernism, and later 20th-century language-oriented writing.

From the guide to the Gerald Burns Manuscripts and Other Documents, 1978-1985, (University of California, San Diego. Geisel Library. Mandeville Special Collections Library.)