Praise for With Aeneas in a Time of Plague

Christopher Bursk’s With Aeneas in a Time of Plague is the most accomplished collection I’ve read in a long while. I might call it poignant and timely, vulnerable and intellectual, tender and unafraid because all of that is true, but more than that in the course of reading I felt like I was marveling at the construction of a bridge that’s reimagined physics. This collection collapses ancient history with current issues and uses a dead language and a shared, epic reading experience to explore sexuality, masculinity, war games, family dynamics, love, loss, and so much more. I’m awed by the ways Bursk grounds us in personal territory while pointing beyond the self in subtle and poignant ways. These poems show what glory comes of living a life in verse.
     —Lisa Fay Coutley, author of tether

What does The Aeneid have to do with us? Bursk, like Vergil, descends. He teaches us how the ordinary world becomes mythic in our memories, shaping our fears, our loves, and our fates. Then he brings us back the way that poets always have—through song. He writes, “We know music and poetry / will not save anyone, but we sing anyway” In this time of disease and uncertainty, when many of us have lost so much, Bursk reminds us that The Aeneid is our story, too. Through this contemporary retelling, the epic is resurrected, and we realize that our lives are no more or less than this narrative, the speaker is no more or less than Aeneas, his father no more or less than Anchises, and we are lucky to experience this song, these poems, this grief and celebration, with him.
     —Brandi George, author of Faun: A Play in Verse