Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
Always a big fan of playing with form, and the marginal notes here hit the spot well. The focus is not what I expected at all, but I really didn’t mind as Lerner’s writing style is always fun (in an I can’t stop way).
Obviously not convinced Lerner actually hates poetry (lol), and I don’t agree with many of his points, but damn. His writing is incredible. I could read his line by line, word by word engagement with poems all day.
3.5 — good stuff for my paper but my eyes glazed over occasionally and this wasn’t like. groundbreaking
Definitely a dense piece of work, and largely of use - I'd imagine - as a kind of academic text, but I just love the way Ben Lerner writes about this stuff.
A good poem’s merit arises from the overwhelming revulsion evoked by a bad poem, or, in other words, it is easy for almost any reader to spot a bad poem, more-so than, say, a bad painting or piece of classical music. This is why poetry as an art form is important and why good poetry is so moving.
challenging
funny
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Totally unique, so far as I know. Awesome. I want more.
Short but ambitious and full of candor. I really enjoyed Lerner's description of how he decided he wanted to be a poet, especially the Challenger/Ronald Reagan anecdote, which I could swear repeatedly pops up throughout his other texts. He has a couple topics that he loves to return to, tying his body of work together and making it feel like I'm on the metro, every once in a while recognizing the stations— hey, we've been there before. But it's more resonant than repetitive, and it's very satisfying to see him making connections in what feels like real time.
I will say that poetry is something I've never known how to approach. It's still pretty unclear to me after having read this, because it feels, to me, like reading poetry requires an intense and thorough knowledge of the technical (iambic pentameters? dactyls? elegies?) combined with strong artistic intuition. This patchwork toolkit has always intimidated me, but I guess poetry's supposed "badness" has also left me a lot of food for thought.
This might be a silly tangent, but doesn't it almost strike you as Lacanian? There's probably a better analogy to be made here, but the disconnect between the actual and virtual of poetry, reminds me of the similarly unbridgeable gap between the unified version of ourselves in the mirror versus the fragmented self-perception of our emotion. It does make me a little sad that poetry is defined by its shortcomings more than its accomplishment, but I see the beauty inspired by that conflict, made sublime not in spite of it but because of it.
I will say that poetry is something I've never known how to approach. It's still pretty unclear to me after having read this, because it feels, to me, like reading poetry requires an intense and thorough knowledge of the technical (iambic pentameters? dactyls? elegies?) combined with strong artistic intuition. This patchwork toolkit has always intimidated me, but I guess poetry's supposed "badness" has also left me a lot of food for thought.
This might be a silly tangent, but doesn't it almost strike you as Lacanian? There's probably a better analogy to be made here, but the disconnect between the actual and virtual of poetry, reminds me of the similarly unbridgeable gap between the unified version of ourselves in the mirror versus the fragmented self-perception of our emotion. It does make me a little sad that poetry is defined by its shortcomings more than its accomplishment, but I see the beauty inspired by that conflict, made sublime not in spite of it but because of it.
informative
reflective
fast-paced