A review by cstefko
The Hatred of Poetry, by Ben Lerner
5.0
4.75 stars
I really enjoyed this essay. To be fair, I'm not super academically-minded, but I can appreciate literary criticism on occasion. I found this book pretty accessible to someone who has fairly limited experience (in my case, a college minor in literature) with such reading.
Ben Lerner hates poetry the way a Harry Potter fan hates Snape--you love to hate them/it. It's an affectionate, respectful hatred. I think one of the aspects I most appreciated about Lerner's essay was his playful but pointed tone.
Lerner does close readings of poems from several very different poets (Dickinson, Keats, Whitman, Rankine, and the terrible McGonagall poem that I had never heard of before), and somehow it all works together. I love that he included works by women and people of color, and fired back at critics that dismiss such poets as not "universal" enough. Also, anyone who defends Sylvia Plath is okay in my book.
I also learned (or maybe I had previously learned but forgot until reading about it now) the technical term for the " / " that separates lines of poetry in quotation is a "virgule." Learning the etymology of that term was interesting, too, and his examination of how the use of virgules can influence our readings/influence the effect of poems. I particularly loved his interpretation of Emily Dickinson's dashes and the format of her envelope poems. He sees the dashes as "vectors of implication," and notes that the structure of Dickinson's poems "caus[es] us to shift back and forth between modes of perception--we read one minute and look the next, the object refusing to become or to remain a typical poem." I thought this was one of his strongest considerations of the potential over the actual.
Definitely feeling eager to finally dip into Claudia Rankine's work after reading some of her poems here, and to go back to some classics that I didn't spend much time with in college (Pound especially; I still regret having to drop that Modernist Poetry seminar for a business school pre-req... sigh).
This might be too dense for a very casual poetry fan, but I found it a rather light and enjoyable read. I spent most of the book nodding my head in agreement and silently mouthing "yasss." The ending is a little scattered, but I didn't hate the inclusion of some of his personal experiences/observations beyond poetry.
I really enjoyed this essay. To be fair, I'm not super academically-minded, but I can appreciate literary criticism on occasion. I found this book pretty accessible to someone who has fairly limited experience (in my case, a college minor in literature) with such reading.
Ben Lerner hates poetry the way a Harry Potter fan hates Snape--you love to hate them/it. It's an affectionate, respectful hatred. I think one of the aspects I most appreciated about Lerner's essay was his playful but pointed tone.
Lerner does close readings of poems from several very different poets (Dickinson, Keats, Whitman, Rankine, and the terrible McGonagall poem that I had never heard of before), and somehow it all works together. I love that he included works by women and people of color, and fired back at critics that dismiss such poets as not "universal" enough. Also, anyone who defends Sylvia Plath is okay in my book.
I also learned (or maybe I had previously learned but forgot until reading about it now) the technical term for the " / " that separates lines of poetry in quotation is a "virgule." Learning the etymology of that term was interesting, too, and his examination of how the use of virgules can influence our readings/influence the effect of poems. I particularly loved his interpretation of Emily Dickinson's dashes and the format of her envelope poems. He sees the dashes as "vectors of implication," and notes that the structure of Dickinson's poems "caus[es] us to shift back and forth between modes of perception--we read one minute and look the next, the object refusing to become or to remain a typical poem." I thought this was one of his strongest considerations of the potential over the actual.
Definitely feeling eager to finally dip into Claudia Rankine's work after reading some of her poems here, and to go back to some classics that I didn't spend much time with in college (Pound especially; I still regret having to drop that Modernist Poetry seminar for a business school pre-req... sigh).
This might be too dense for a very casual poetry fan, but I found it a rather light and enjoyable read. I spent most of the book nodding my head in agreement and silently mouthing "yasss." The ending is a little scattered, but I didn't hate the inclusion of some of his personal experiences/observations beyond poetry.