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Joan Burstyn
About
Welcome to my website! I’m Joan Burstyn, author of Path Into the Sun: Poems from 1985 to 2006. Award-winning poet Joan Burstyn is the author of two other poetry books, Song Cycle (1976) and Waiting for the Lame Horse (1987). She is also the winner of the 2007 Milton Dorfman poetry prize, and a contributor to the Women’s Voices Radio CD that won a 2007 Clarion Award from Women in the Media. A historian of education, she is Professor Emerita at Syracuse University. About my latest book, Path Into the Sun: Poems from 1985 to 2006. “Joan Burstyn views the stuff of our daily lives with keen observation rendered in thoughtful expression. These lyrical poems remind us that the life cycle and our emotional reactions to everyday occurrences bring to the surface love, memories, regret and thoughts of life’s ending. An inspiring book.” —Ferris Olin, Director, Institute for Women and Art, Rutgers University “Finally, the public can enjoy Joan Burstyn’s poetry as the Woods Hole community has for years!” —Margaret McCormick, Director Woods Hole Public Library In Path Into the Sun, award-winning poet Joan Burstyn shares her beautifully intense collection of lyrical free verse. With an engaging style, Burstyn weaves…
Books
Religion Searching For God: Study Partners Explore Contemporary Jewish Texts (2011) Poetry Path Into The Sun: Poems from 1985 to 2006 (2009) Waiting For the Lame Horse (1987) Song Cycle (1976) View on Amazon | View on Barnes u0026#038; Noble Other Topics Preventing Violence in Schools: A Challenge To American Democracy (Co-Author, 2001) View on Amazon | View on Barnes u0026#038; Noble Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women (Editor-in-Chief, 1997) More Information | View on Amazon | View on Barnes u0026#038; Noble Educating Tomorrow’s Valuable Citizen (Editor, 1996) View on Amazon | View on Barnes u0026#038; Noble Desktop Publishing in the University (Editor, 1991) View on Amazon | View on Barnes u0026#038; Noble Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (1980) View on Amazon | View on Barnes u0026#038; Noble Catharine Beecher and the Education of American Women (1974) View on Amazon | View on Barnes u0026#038; Noble Acknowledged u0026#038; Contributed Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975 (2007) View on Amazon | View on Barnes u0026#038; Noble Women in God’s Army: Gender and Equality in the Early Salvation Army (2003) View on Amazon When Women Ask the Questions: Creating Women’s Studies in America (2001) View on Amazon | View…
Blog
Press u0026#038; Reviews
Review of Path Into the Sun by Ronald Waldron, England Joan Burstyn’s poetry is artfully designed to be approachable by the common reader. The language and rhythms of these brief lyric poems are those of everyday conversation or meditation heightened into verse. She allows herself very little in the way of artifice. Rhyme and assonance are used so rarely as to seem inadvertent (p. 50: bell / call, fly / July). The figure of choice is typically simile: p. 44, “my mind searches out thoughts, like a scavenger seeking for bread” Sometimes she goes straight to metaphor (e.g., p. 58, Covering Up the Rust); a dream setting may give scope for the imaginary and the fantastic (e.g., p. 48, Blanched Bones); occasionally even allegory makes an appearance (e.g., p. 72, The Gates). But everywhere, approaches are clearly signaled and the overall effect is one of directness and transparency, of an honest wish to communicate, individual to individual, a recognised and shared experience. We are aware throughout that this experience is based on the poet’s personal and professional life; but, while the personal history is never far from the surface -indeed is sometimes precisely specified, as in, for instance, Atlanta, History…
Contact
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Contact
Email Joan at
jburstyn@syr.edu
.