Theresa Burns' debut collection of poems, Design, is just released from Terrapin Books. She is also the author of the chapbook Two Train Town (2017). Her poetry, reviews, and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, JAMA, The Cortland Review, The Night Heron Barks, Plume, SWWIM, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee and former book editor, she is the founder of the community—based reading series Watershed Literary Events and teaches writing in and around New York.

Books by Theresa Burns:

Other poems on the web by Theresa Burns:
"Letter to My Almost Former House"
"Shade Lovers"
"Narrowing"

*Theresa Burns's Website.

About Design:

"In Design Theresa Burns repeatedly proves her eye more than 'just a muscle that records what it's seeing' as she constructs image after image in poems often informed by memory as well as by the richness of the natural world and all that is subject to erosion and decay, to make sense of the 'sweet / but bitter' human experience, of seasons of plenty and seasons of lack. What the poet has managed here is a lively ode to the ordinary, to that which we should love and appreciate because it doesn't last. Finely crafted, richly textured, this is an exciting debut."
—Nathan McClain

"The poems in Design are uncommonly moving, steady, and unafraid to embrace the often-fleeting beauty of the world, even amidst the ugly, or just the everyday. To read Design is to celebrate being, all of ours, and to remember—in our chaotic hour—the grace that words grant us all. Theresa Burns has given us this gift of her perception, so we may further appreciate our own."
—Lynn Melnick

"These poems touch, caress, ponder, and probe myriad facets of the world's body, that tangible, earthy presence that sustains and enlivens us. A daughter in her fashion of all—encompassing Walt, Theresa Burns revels in the whole of the tuneful yet muddy yet encouraging yet saddening drama, the great participial thrust Walt was so keen on—living. Carefully wrought, each poem has that this-is-a—leaf-from-the-earth feel, a fullness of feeling that is explicit and—to use one of the poet's words— evergreen."
—Baron Wormser