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gillygab's review
2.0
I couldn't even finish this essay. I found it dull and of little merit. Maybe all of the good bits are near the end? I made it about a quarter of the way through and had to call it quits.
drs's review
4.5
This is the best defense of poetry I've read. It's lucid, compelling, and digs right down to the central tension of the poetic project: that it's impossible to not fall short.
amaya_a's review
Interesting, has more of an academic tone that I thought it would have
meghan_is_reading's review
The main argument is that we hate poetry because it doesn't match up with a platonic ideal of what poetry could be, or could do. Sometimes tho, I have no idea what poetry is trying to do so I'm glad to read someone else talk about it. I was also glad when Lerner, in talking about the desire for poetry to be both individual + universal, points out the bias of one critic in assuming only white men can really speak for everyone and that no men could relate to Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" or example.
soafricane's review
4.0
Lerner offers an argument for impulses that drive readers away from poetry and the contradicting themes inherent within them.
Short and interesting.
Short and interesting.
ollieshrouder's review
3.0
As others have stated, Lerner uses hatred as a jumping off point to explore whatever he fancies in the world of poetry, from Rankine to Whitman, with surprisingly little motif bridging them all together if we ignore the introduction and final two pages. It’s a shame the structure is messy, because he is a brilliant poetry critic when taken in paragraphs, not essays.
thechristine's review
2.0
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like they knew what they were talking about as in this book called The Hatred of Poetry?