Reviews

The Lichtenberg Figures by Ben Lerner

caramels's review

4.0

“I attend a class for mouth-to-mouth, a class for hand-to-hand.
I can no longer distinguish between combat and resuscitation.”

vivslibrary's review

2.0

“Sensation dissolves into sense through this idle discussion, into a sense that sees itself and is afraid. Still, we must finish our coffee
and partition epiphany
into its formative mistakes.”

i liked some of the poems; some were thought provoking, some were funny. most were just mediocre imo

kquickly's review

5.0

Master Poet

I've never been a huge fan of titles, either. Bravo, Lerner. This is my favorite collection of your work so far.

wildpaleyonder's review

informative reflective

5.0

kjw's review

3.0

Some of the individual poems are decent, but by and large this felt like a mediocre (if less problematic) remix of Berryman’s Dream Songs.

maddiedodge's review

4.0

recommended by a dear friend, this collection of poems kept me company on the metro and for that I am greatful. ben lerner has a way of pulling sense out of nonsense and bearing so many sudden truths on the page. would recommend for anyone looking to read something fresh, bright, and punctuated.

jtth's review

3.0

The stars will be adjusted for inflation
so that the dead can continue living
in the manner to which they've grown accustomed.

p. 18

Perhaps what remains of innovation
is a conservatism at peace with contradiction

as the sky transgresses its frame
but obeys the museum.

p. 22

Ben Lerner's The Lichtenberg Figures is a bit of a tough book of poetry. It's a sonnet sequence ostensibly about growing up in the midwest, but it's frustrated, as many of us were in the early 2000s, with the way the world seemed to work. Reading it now made me almost nostalgic for a kind of frustration that now seems so okay, so naïve, so less harmful to the fundaments of society, rather than to the bodies of people across the world. It's not funny in the way Patricia Lockwood can be, nor is it particularly melancholy. It's more abstract than that, more systematic. I enjoyed it, and I'll need to come back to it and his newer The Hatred of Poetry.

elliotriley's review

5.0

Sometimes things are undeniably pretentious ... but I like them anyway. This was that. I like the way he oscillates between obscure/difficult/high brow lines, and very straightforward ones. Parts made me laugh out loud (for example, an unexpected Brittney Spears reference amidst the high brow confusion.) Parts of this are very clever. Poetry either holds my attention or it doesn't, and I'm still trying to pinpoint why. I basically couldn't put it down.