Dan Chiasson
Lorraine C. Wang Professor of English
Poet and critic.
I write poems when I am able; I write other stuff the rest of the time. I have been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 2000. I also write regularly about poetry, politics, art, and popular music for The New York Review of Books. I have published six books, most recently The Math Campers (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020). My next project is a book about my hometown and the role it played in shaping the ideas and career of Bernie Sanders: Bernie for Burlington: Politics and Change in One American Place (Alfred A. Knopf, 2026). I enjoy teaching poetry of all periods, with an emphasis on recent American poets.
Education
- B.A., Amherst College
- Ph.D., Harvard University
Current and upcoming courses
30 Poems
ENG125
This course provides an introduction to poetry by focusing one at a time and in detail on thirty poems, from Sappho to Octavio Gonzalez. Each poem will be considered as a unique arrangement of words, images, and metaphors on the page; as a script for vocal performance; as a word game whose rules must be deduced; as an expression of the full range of private emotions, including joy, anguish, passion, remorse, and boredom; as a reflection of, and a contribution to, the historical and cultural frameworks of its time and place. Authors may include: William Shakespeare; Sir Walter Raleigh; George Herbert; Christopher Smart; John Keats; Marianne Moore; Elizabeth Bishop; Sylvia Plath; Lucille Clifton; Jenny Xie; Tarfiah Faizullah.