Arts Section, 9th August 2012

So what are the dreams of a man who has already enjoyed money, and power, and a successful career as an international businessman, and a certain degree of fame? For Dan Burt, it all comes down to being taken seriously as a writer. Mr. Burt, who lives most of the year in London, but who also spends time at his home on Schooner Head in Bar Harbor, will be reading from his latest book "We Look Like This," at the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor on the evening of Friday, Aug. 10, at 7 p.m.

In a recent conversation, Mr. Burt talked about his new work which features poems and prose in a style that some critics have described as "muscular," yet which betrays an unexpected sensitivity and gift of perception hidden behind an often dismissive and hard-bitten exterior. "The poet arises and the metaphor grows out of what you see and come to understand," he said of the process he uses to write. "You look for enduring elements under the structures, or in the character of a person," he continued. "From the entrails of reality you find understanding of the fundamental world around you."

From the hardscrabble upbringing on the streets of Philadelphia, to his eventual education at Cambridge and Yale Law School and into his career in business around the world, Mr. Burt always has been, at his core, a brawler. It comes naturally from his relationship with his father who, he explains, often dealt with the world with fists, rather than words.

The first offering in "We Look Like This," deals with the violence that permeated his relationship with his father, although, he is quick to point out, it did not lead to an estrangement. "His first reaction to any problem was to hit," Mr. Burt explains. "That's just the way it was. I didn't realize that being beaten by your father wasn't standard," he added. "Was it abuse? That's not how I saw it. It's a harsh world. People think it was awful but that's just the way it was. He raised me to compete with him."

In the poem, "Who He Was," Mr. Burt profiles the relationship he had with his father while growing up. Terms often associated with warfare pepper the piece, which in tone and timber projects the violence of that childhood reality. It ends, however, on an almost sentimental note, with his father, who early in life worked in a butcher shop, being laid to rest in his charter boat captain's uniform, a man reinvented. "He transformed himself and became a fisherman at a time when it was a very romantic thing to do," Mr. Burt said. Mr. Burt eventually went to work on his father's boat and both men earned the respect of the other. "There was this bond and he honored it," Mr. Burt said. "You learn to forgive some things. Once you understand the anger, you can forgive." It has been through the introspection that accompanies the writing process, that Mr. Burt has come to see where his own desire for reinvention, from the corporate world to reclusive writer, comes from. "I think that's why I now live near the sea," he said.

At the beginning of "We Look Like This," there is a note that explains that while the prose is done in American English, the poems are done in a mixture of American and British English. Mr. Burt writes: "This is not inadvertence, but a deliberate decision on the author's part." Mr. Burt admits that the note is aimed at heading off potential critics. "Otherwise, they just think you are careless," He said. A lot of poetry is judged by what is fashionable, not necessarily on how well it spotlights truth, he continued. Mr. Burt said he employs not only his words, but also variances in rhyme and meter, however unconventional, depending on what he wants to say. "Look at the poets that last and that's what they are doing." That flouting of convention includes plowing some new publishing ground. Along with the book, Mr. Burt's latest release includes a compact disc of him reading his work. "No one else is doing that," he said.

Despite the fact that all of his reviews in mainstream poetry journals have been overwhelmingly positive, Mr. Burt, a man for whom confidence has always been a steadfast companion, still worries about how his life's work as a poet will be judged.

"We Look Like This," includes the poem "Manqué" [someone who has failed to live up to expectations] which deals with those moments of doubt.

Through fog blown inland off the sea
By tumbled walls amidst old trees
Summoning verse from memory
That others wrote, I walk my land,
A stiff-kneed quondam businessman
Fixed on Ulyssses, lesser men,
Faded notes, a dry pen,
And, push come to shove
I am no good at what I love.

According to Mr. Burt, in the end, his true measure of success isn't financial or political, but rather, whether or not people understand and appreciate his writing. "What really matters," he said, "is when somebody finishes reading my work and gets a little bit more knowledge about themselves." According to Mr. Burt, he is now putting the finishing touches on his next book which will include more prose and wherein he will have finished his explorations of the relationship with his father and other topics first raised in earlier works. So what's next? "That's a question that haunts me," he said.

EARL BRECHLIN