7th April 2011

Poetry, in essence, is about the search for truth. And for poet Dan Burt, who made his mark in life, and his considerable fortune, as a high-powered attorney and successful international businessman, writing is a way to reconnect to the fundemental truths he discovered as a young man - touch-stones that so often in his life become hopelessly buried under the sediments of expediency, self deception and compromise.

It is a process of stripping away those layers, to reveal the original strata below, that drives Mr. Burt - regardless of how potentially shocking or upsetting the thoughts revealed by the naked bedrock of his soul may be. Mr. Burt, who lives most of the year in London but spends considerable time at his ocean-front home on Schooner Head in Bar Harbor, has just released his latest volume of poetry and prose "Certain Windows," with Lintott Press. He will be joining writers Jane Draycott and Elaine Feinstein for a reading at the London review Bookshop on April 12 (2011). "Certain Windows" will be available locally at Sherman's book store in Bar Harbor.

In a recent interview, Mr. Burt explained that some of the pieces in the 64-page book have been published previously while others are brand new. "It's as close as I will ever get to autobiographical," Mr. Burt said.  The book includes the poem "Trade," which speaks of memories Mr. Burt has of his youth spending time on his father's charter fishing boat running out of Brannigan Inlet on the coats of New Jersey.  "I started going at age 5. I was a mate at 11 or 12," he recalled.  "It's seen through the eyes of a very old man."

According to Mr. Burt, exploringhow he slowly veered away from that life on the water and into the world of law and business brings up fundemental questions about how anyone moves through life.  "What interests me most is what really happened,"  he said.  "Why didn't I see things more clearly?  I'm going back and looking at a world I thought was worth having."  Not that mMr. Burt rejects the life he has now.  "I am fortunate to live amidst tremendous beauty," he said "I miss that world I came from. But had I stayed there, I would have been bored."

Trying to trace the metaphysical echoes of how a person goes from swabbing fish guts and blood off the deck of a charter boat to being a multi-millionaire with homes on two continents naturally dredges up demons.  Titanic, yet often unfathomed spiritual conflicts arise, Mr. Burt noted, when people live one life in publicbut subscribe to a different set of truths in private.  "In 50 years in law and business I've never had a problem of legality or ethics," Mr. Burt said.  But, he continued, people in those worlds almost universally refuse to acknowledge the differences between what they do for a living and what they actually know in their hearts.  "People didn't want to talk about that," he said.

One example is that being an attorney is often referred to as being "a noble profession."  What it is, he explained, is much more basic than that.  "It's like whores. We're a service business,"  he said.  Along those lines, Mr. Burt said he would not want his own daughter to become a lawyer. He has even established several scholorship funds for college students, providing they don't go into law or theology - religion being another area Mr. Burt holds in particular disdain.

When he begins writing, Mr. Burt agonizes over whether an idea will be sufficiently strong to come to fruition.  "At the start of every new poem I worry, 'Will it run out, will it be bad,'" he said.  As he plunges deeper into focusing his mind on the one thought, he withdraws further and further from other people.  "When I start a piece you don't want to be around me," he said.  "The doors are shut and you don't even knock. Once I'm into it, then I get obsessed about it."

According to Mr. Burt, truth in writing requires a component of timelessness.  "You hope people will still read about you 50 years from now," he said.  "You hope the work is sufficiently plainspoken so it doesn't date."

In the end, Mr. Burt does not see his writing as an indictment of any one profession or path in life, rather he views his words as a cautionary tale for those who still have time to make changes or who just want to live a more examined life.  "Some of the poems in here are really going to bother people," he ssaid.  "This is just how I feel about it. It's show and tell. That's what art does."

EARL BRECHLIN
MOUNT DESERT ISLANDER