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Angle of Yaw
In his bold second book, Ben Lerner molds philosophical insight, political outrage, and personal experience into a devastating critique of mass society. Angle of Yaw investigates the fate of public space, public speech, and how the technologies of viewing—aerial photography in particular—feed our culture an image of itself. And it’s a spectacular view.
The man observes the action on the field with the tiny television he brought to the stadium. He is topless, painted gold, bewigged. His exaggerated foam index finger indicates the giant screen upon which his own image is now displayed, a model of fanaticism. He watches the image of his watching the image on his portable TV on his portable TV. He suddenly stands with arms upraised and initiates the wave that will consume him.
Haunted by our current “war on terror,” much of the book was written while Lerner was living in Madrid (at the time of the Atocha bombings and their political aftermath), as the author steeped himself in the history of Franco and fascism. Regardless of when or where it was written, Angle of Yaw will further establish Ben Lerner as one of our most intriguing and least predictable poets.
The man observes the action on the field with the tiny television he brought to the stadium. He is topless, painted gold, bewigged. His exaggerated foam index finger indicates the giant screen upon which his own image is now displayed, a model of fanaticism. He watches the image of his watching the image on his portable TV on his portable TV. He suddenly stands with arms upraised and initiates the wave that will consume him.
Haunted by our current “war on terror,” much of the book was written while Lerner was living in Madrid (at the time of the Atocha bombings and their political aftermath), as the author steeped himself in the history of Franco and fascism. Regardless of when or where it was written, Angle of Yaw will further establish Ben Lerner as one of our most intriguing and least predictable poets.
144 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2006
43 people are currently reading
1162 people want to read
About the author
Ben Lerner
71 books1,610 followersBen Lerner is an American poet, novelist, and critic. He was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of fifty-two sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures. In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry. The Lichtenberg Figures appeared in a German translation in 2010, for which it received the "Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie" in 2011, making Lerner the first American to receive this honor.
Born and raised in Topeka, which figures in each of his books of poetry, Lerner is a 1997 graduate of Topeka High School where he was a standout in debate and forensics. At Brown University he earned a B.A. in Political Theory and an MFA in Poetry. He traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain in 2003 where he wrote his second book, Angle of Yaw, which was published in 2006 and was subsequently named a finalist for the National Book Award, and was selected by Brian Foley as one of the "25 important books of poetry of the 00s (2000-2009)". Lerner's third full-length poetry collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010.
Lerner's first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was published by Coffee House Press in August 2011. It was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and New York Magazine, among other periodicals. It won the Believer Book Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for "first fiction" and the New York Public Library's Young Lions prize.
In 2008 Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British academic publication. He has taught at California College of the Arts, the University of Pittsburgh, and in 2010 joined the faculty of the MFA program at Brooklyn College.
Lerner's mother is the well-known psychologist Harriet Lerner.
Born and raised in Topeka, which figures in each of his books of poetry, Lerner is a 1997 graduate of Topeka High School where he was a standout in debate and forensics. At Brown University he earned a B.A. in Political Theory and an MFA in Poetry. He traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain in 2003 where he wrote his second book, Angle of Yaw, which was published in 2006 and was subsequently named a finalist for the National Book Award, and was selected by Brian Foley as one of the "25 important books of poetry of the 00s (2000-2009)". Lerner's third full-length poetry collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010.
Lerner's first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was published by Coffee House Press in August 2011. It was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and New York Magazine, among other periodicals. It won the Believer Book Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for "first fiction" and the New York Public Library's Young Lions prize.
In 2008 Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British academic publication. He has taught at California College of the Arts, the University of Pittsburgh, and in 2010 joined the faculty of the MFA program at Brooklyn College.
Lerner's mother is the well-known psychologist Harriet Lerner.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
January 22, 2009
The most entertaining thing about Lerner is how he's able to use recursive forms to work through the politicized contemporary world we live in. This to me seems the most inherent thing to note about the book. "Begetting Stadia" seem to be sonetesque variations; "Angle of Yaw" are the prose poem blocks; "Didactic Elegy" consists almost entirely of quatrains; "Twenty-One Gun Salute for Ronald Regan" composed of 9 line stanzas with closing couplets; All of which (with the arguable exception of the prose poems) have lines that end in terminal punctuation(mostly). This seems to suggest that the poems of Lerner are unable, for the most part, to move past their individual lines, their frames/forms. We experience the autonomy of a line much more specifically if it is terminally punctuated, it can't go on, we have to deal with it as singular despite it's stanzaic metonymy. But his wit and humor are punctuated by the placement of lines next to each other, as others have noted, in fact it depends on the ridiculous and truth of this placement.
It seems to me the list I've used for the title are some, note some, of the "anchors" of this work. Indeed all of these things seem to evoke a sense of violence, unease, tension, action, and questions of worth. My favorite lines from the first read(this summer, not this week) "You are the first and last indigenous Nintendo." "The child makes a substantial advancement in poetics / with a can of hairspray and a Bic."
In the second reading, I was drawn to other lines: "The value of hope is that it has no use value. / Hope is the saddest of formalisms"(65). This seems eerily significant in lieu of recent political developments. Also: "Even in death, the old debate between / depth and surface: some poets attach weights to their ankles, others just / float facedown. What is the value of reading? Depends. What is it keep-/ing you from doing?(101). Obviously we're again dealing with depth and surface, but we're also talking about authorial intent, the deep weight to ankles intent, or the floating surface intent. Most importantly either way you die; reading then necessitates the death of authors, and in reading we are not killing ourselves, perhaps. And even complicated further: "The president's statement is meaningless / unless to be American means to embrace one's death, / which is possible"(63). So the American author must die... according to Learner, our (ex)president.
Lastly Lerner seems to be working Adorno fairly heavily here, no? And this book makes me depressed because I feel like Learner is asking what's next in poetry(art) quite elegantly and as poet I don't know how to attempt to accomplish anything better than "Yaw", let alone as good.
"The meaninglessness of the drawing is therefore meaningful
and the failure to seek out value is heroic.
Is this all that remains of poetry?
Ignorance that sees itself is elegy."
I feel like I've been reduced to four lines of verse.
From "Twenty-one Gun Salute for Ronald Regan":
"The child makes a substantial advancement in poetics
with a canister of spray and a Bic."
It seems to me the list I've used for the title are some, note some, of the "anchors" of this work. Indeed all of these things seem to evoke a sense of violence, unease, tension, action, and questions of worth. My favorite lines from the first read(this summer, not this week) "You are the first and last indigenous Nintendo." "The child makes a substantial advancement in poetics / with a can of hairspray and a Bic."
In the second reading, I was drawn to other lines: "The value of hope is that it has no use value. / Hope is the saddest of formalisms"(65). This seems eerily significant in lieu of recent political developments. Also: "Even in death, the old debate between / depth and surface: some poets attach weights to their ankles, others just / float facedown. What is the value of reading? Depends. What is it keep-/ing you from doing?(101). Obviously we're again dealing with depth and surface, but we're also talking about authorial intent, the deep weight to ankles intent, or the floating surface intent. Most importantly either way you die; reading then necessitates the death of authors, and in reading we are not killing ourselves, perhaps. And even complicated further: "The president's statement is meaningless / unless to be American means to embrace one's death, / which is possible"(63). So the American author must die... according to Learner, our (ex)president.
Lastly Lerner seems to be working Adorno fairly heavily here, no? And this book makes me depressed because I feel like Learner is asking what's next in poetry(art) quite elegantly and as poet I don't know how to attempt to accomplish anything better than "Yaw", let alone as good.
"The meaninglessness of the drawing is therefore meaningful
and the failure to seek out value is heroic.
Is this all that remains of poetry?
Ignorance that sees itself is elegy."
I feel like I've been reduced to four lines of verse.
From "Twenty-one Gun Salute for Ronald Regan":
"The child makes a substantial advancement in poetics
with a canister of spray and a Bic."
December 13, 2015
Sometimes I feel that even Ben Lerner doesn't know what Ben Lerner is writing about. But, you know, ...Modernist!
November 28, 2008
Appeals to the head, definitely not the heart, though there are some incredibly arresting phrases. Lerner's intelligence and ability to turn theory into a poem that mocks, at a slight distance, theory, is impressive. This collection is largely about how and why we see. It's brilliant.
March 26, 2017
What does poetry mean could be expanded to ask, What does anything mean? That’s a good question for some, but with me definitions erase the experience and replace it with something else. You got to have definitions, just as you have to have stories to process life, but never forget it’s all an artful fabrication. Reading ANGLE OF YAW by Ben Lerner I was brought up to that wall partitioning me from meaning and mistakenly tried to climb it. Occasionally, like when a more topical line popped up, something about 9/11, say, it steered the point of the poem to make me think: This means something. And of course it does. But why parse the piece to bits when the poet spent so much time and effort to put it together just right? My quixotic quest for significance, for a link to current events or a great theme, was lost in the reading. The text is a collage of colloquialisms in new context that is invigorating by itself. There’s a longer poem about Ronald Reagan, which may be the closest approximation of what it was like to live in that scary time. But only if you read it. I went back to cherry pick some of the many lines that made me laugh and think and just admire the intelligence of its assemblage, but I couldn’t pull them from their pages, because then they’d be meaningless.
January 12, 2011
I am still wrapping my coiled brain around this strange elegy and anti-elegy, depiction and the problematics of depiction, direction and deviation, the propaganda of fear and fear of propaganda, humor and despair, and so much more. But I appreciate how many directions Lerner forces my mind to go; how many angles he creates. It's fascinating and eerie how his absurd depictions and rhetoric have such authority. It makes me wonder how aliens do or will react to hearing Chuck Berry on a gold record among other equations. It also makes me wonder how humans actually still believe in slogans and political rhetoric. I can understand how some readers might dislike how caught in the mind this book feels, but such intense intellectualism ultimately has emotional resonance. You can feel the repression and its uncanny results. The last line begs the question of how well are we recording and witnessing the tragedies that afflict us, not only literally but also emotionally.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2024
honey im home
i feel a lot of loyalty to this book’s interests and form—the centered block of percussive sentences, normative syntax with associative thinking, etc juxtaposed with the long poem form beside it.
He’s a master! But it’s also clear that some of the thinking in it is in poetry because to do philosophical writing and cultural criticism would require more rigor and more commitment to be worth reading. Which is kind of frustrating at points, where the poetry feels rhetorical or argumentative but is still unwilling to commit to linear thinking. But it’s hard to blame him, he’s a writer that’s interested in American culture, aura, phenomenology, etc. and sometimes poetry can be a great space for thinking to be done in a way that’s not allowed in other forms.
I would say that it’s a funny, masterful, sometimes frustrating read that i would recommend myself to read if i met myself but cannot think of anyone i know that i would recommend it to
i feel a lot of loyalty to this book’s interests and form—the centered block of percussive sentences, normative syntax with associative thinking, etc juxtaposed with the long poem form beside it.
He’s a master! But it’s also clear that some of the thinking in it is in poetry because to do philosophical writing and cultural criticism would require more rigor and more commitment to be worth reading. Which is kind of frustrating at points, where the poetry feels rhetorical or argumentative but is still unwilling to commit to linear thinking. But it’s hard to blame him, he’s a writer that’s interested in American culture, aura, phenomenology, etc. and sometimes poetry can be a great space for thinking to be done in a way that’s not allowed in other forms.
I would say that it’s a funny, masterful, sometimes frustrating read that i would recommend myself to read if i met myself but cannot think of anyone i know that i would recommend it to
November 15, 2007
I am not the sort of reader that devours this kind of work. It's not my usual cup of tea. But I found myself drawn in by the complex modulation of tone here, and the deft mix of humor, politics, irony, despair, intellect, and so forth. This isn't a book with much music to it, though, but perhaps that befits its aim. This is not embodied work so much as polyphonous body politic or some such. Gave me lots to think about, and I found myself digging the rhythms of it, if not the sounds themselves.
December 31, 2020
These are highly intellectualized poems. The long Didactic Elegy invites dispute. Many of the shorter ones feel like an average day of reality diligently stripped of emotion and and then shredded.
Or better: emotions have to be controlled, while everything intellectual can be speculative and vague. This is anti-lyrical poetry (at its best). Like so:
HOLD ME, says the microphone. The dialogue inside my body is breaking down. The doctor insists on changing the tense, but the gesture is lost on me, stranded on the skin. When did I ever say that I could teach you how to live, demands the canvas. Light wishes only to be a history of its transfers, wishes only to be land. They have pricked my back with a series of suspected allergens, an allegory of reading, but my skin is notoriously indifferent. To print media. To the dialogue of fear and pity designed to restore the public’s settings. You have a swelled head, complain my hands.
Or better: emotions have to be controlled, while everything intellectual can be speculative and vague. This is anti-lyrical poetry (at its best). Like so:
HOLD ME, says the microphone. The dialogue inside my body is breaking down. The doctor insists on changing the tense, but the gesture is lost on me, stranded on the skin. When did I ever say that I could teach you how to live, demands the canvas. Light wishes only to be a history of its transfers, wishes only to be land. They have pricked my back with a series of suspected allergens, an allegory of reading, but my skin is notoriously indifferent. To print media. To the dialogue of fear and pity designed to restore the public’s settings. You have a swelled head, complain my hands.
Read
December 17, 2023lovely as an immediate progression from Lichtenberg, more willing to be directly parsed, more sentence, more consistent theme. Good lord. a poem like HIDEAWAY BEDS is absolutely one of the best I've read this month & it's wedged in a long sequence. yah it all feels very like the ashbery comparison is being begged & I don't hate it.... I'm not with it either
ben's ABOSLUTELY not for everybody & I couldn't wander round heartily recommending this like trailing daisies. it's probably masochistic, actually, one to ram yr head against rather than close yr eyes and follow the gorgeous sweeping of th heart . who know
ben's ABOSLUTELY not for everybody & I couldn't wander round heartily recommending this like trailing daisies. it's probably masochistic, actually, one to ram yr head against rather than close yr eyes and follow the gorgeous sweeping of th heart . who know
October 31, 2018
What the hell did I just read - would be a good assessment if you're a Ben Lerner novice. Since I'd read a bulk of his poetry collections and two novels, this is more par for the course.... potent, brimming with innovation and creativity, it's as good a place to begin your relationship with Lerner as any.
December 21, 2024
will surely only grow more rewarding w rereads. i’m consistently impressed by how lerner manages to have such a distinctive voice across fiction, essays, and poetry—not only in his language but in the ideas he mines in each. you can feel him turning over again and again these issues of artifice and experience and every time he manages not only to be intriguing and illuminative but also deeply entertaining.
July 12, 2016
No doubt Lerner is one of the more technically proficient contemporary poets that I'm aware of, but Angle of Yaw's whole aesthetic seems to rest awfully close to David Foster Wallace's, minus any social engagement that you see in the latter's work. Most of the faults here are John Barth's, so it becomes kind of a retrograde DFWallacian affair, as if Wallace'd never written his early fiction and had never wrestled with the issues of metafiction, but inherits all of the graceless faux-academic tinniness of Wallace's prose. Plus a lot of it is a lot less clever than it thinks it is: "My best friend went to Mexico and all I got was this lousy elegy" (88), "Note to self: don't publish this" (94), "I propose truth to be reached by continuing dialectic/I disagree," etc. None of this would be a huge issue elsewhere, but so much of this book trades on cleverness that a hole here and there add up quickly, and I felt that they did.
That all being said, I enjoyed a lot of the shorter pieces for what they were; "Child Actors" has a great line in which any set that is built will invariably have a child actor descend its stairs. "A Large Group of Picnicking Children" ends in another finely-crafted image, "We Dream of Rain" includes an image of rain falling up from a few feet off the ground which you can crawl under and watch. Great stuff. I think my favorite of the whole collection was "Even From Above."
As for the two proper (the first is more of an introduction that a piece on its own, whose phrase is finished in a later shorter piece) longer poems, I feel that "Didactic Elegy" is one of the better pieces here, but "Twenty One Gun Salute for Ronald Reagan" seems like a parody of Lerner's shorter pieces: more jagged and non sequitur than average—where "Didactic Elegy" feels systematic, "Ronald Reagan" just feels random and exhausting.
That all being said, I enjoyed a lot of the shorter pieces for what they were; "Child Actors" has a great line in which any set that is built will invariably have a child actor descend its stairs. "A Large Group of Picnicking Children" ends in another finely-crafted image, "We Dream of Rain" includes an image of rain falling up from a few feet off the ground which you can crawl under and watch. Great stuff. I think my favorite of the whole collection was "Even From Above."
As for the two proper (the first is more of an introduction that a piece on its own, whose phrase is finished in a later shorter piece) longer poems, I feel that "Didactic Elegy" is one of the better pieces here, but "Twenty One Gun Salute for Ronald Reagan" seems like a parody of Lerner's shorter pieces: more jagged and non sequitur than average—where "Didactic Elegy" feels systematic, "Ronald Reagan" just feels random and exhausting.
March 11, 2010
Really a mixed bag here, as most poetry books are. Certain lines are lightning & thunder but there's this huge, unavoidable cloud of annoying drizzle and punchlines that you have to walk through.
Very, very contemporary & American. I mean that as praise, critique and simple truth -- "Is this all that remains of poetry? Ignorance that sees itself as elegy."
I'm glad he's going for it though, wrestling with the form & putting work out there. The prose-poems are reminiscent of Czeslaw Milosz's ABCs & early Andrei Codrescou. Recommended.
Very, very contemporary & American. I mean that as praise, critique and simple truth -- "Is this all that remains of poetry? Ignorance that sees itself as elegy."
I'm glad he's going for it though, wrestling with the form & putting work out there. The prose-poems are reminiscent of Czeslaw Milosz's ABCs & early Andrei Codrescou. Recommended.
January 2, 2016
"A surgery to abridge the body. A reader-friendly body presented to the public. The public depends from a well-regulated militia. Our army, too, has its required reading. A soldier must read Tolstoy's War (abr.), Dostoyevsky's Crime (abr.). Even in death, the old debate between depth and surface: some poets attach weights to their ankles, others just float facedown. What is the value of reading? Depends. What is it keeping you from doing?" p.101
July 5, 2013
Two lines that because they are in this book mean you should read this book: "When we found eyes in the hospital Dumpster, we decided to build the most awesome snowman ever." (found on page 93) "My visit to the dermatologist possessed a nightmarish quality." (found on page 125) Lerner: America's #1 son.
February 6, 2017
Three stars. One additional star rewarded for the luminosity behind "Angels are absences in the snow, visible only from above. When it thaws they will stand up and search for the children they have known."
Read
October 25, 2024Too brainy for me at times, though I still liked it. Lerner is funny and sometimes weirdly touching. I liked the 2nd and 4th sections (prose poems) more than the other three. Some favorites:
-
Eldest sons dispossessed of ancestral tears mock the tears of the nouveaux riches. You call that weeping?
-
THE AVERAGE READER only perceives the initial and final letters of a word. He only reads the longest and most peculiar words in a sentence, intuiting the remaining language. The average reader often turns two pages at once, without perceiving a breach in narrative. He picks up a book, quickly flips through its pages, and believes it read. Conversely, he often reads unawares, will process and even vocalize a text he believes himself to be composing, while in fact reading skywriting, between the lines, on the wall. In your most intimate moments, my average reader, do you not rely on large cards held beyond the audience’s sight? Have you ever applauded without being prompted by an illuminated sign?
-
LASER TECHNOLOGY has fulfilled our people’s ancient dream of a blade so fine that the person it cuts in half remains standing and alive until he moves and cleaves. Until we move, none of us can be sure that we have not already been cut in half, or in many pieces, by a blade of light. It is safest to assume that our throats have already been slit, that the slightest alteration in our postures will cause the painless severance of our heads.
-
A SIDE OF BEEF ON A SILVER PLATTER, a slice of life on a silver screen. A beast with two backs, a war with two fronts. Búsqueda en Google an Abraham doll with realistic trembling. Her exit is emphasized by the receding lines of the parquet floor—who says art criticism is impractical? I’ll grant the world doesn’t need another novel, if you’ll grant the novel doesn’t need another world. The smugness masks a higher sadness, a sudden chiasmic reversal mistaken for love. I just want to be held, but contingently, the way the mind holds a trauma that failed to take place. Realistic suction, realism sucks. Ah, Bartleby!
-
For example, a syllogism subjected to a system of substitutions
allows us to apprehend the experience of logic
at logic’s expense.
Negative formalisms catalyze an experience of structure.
The experience of structure is sad,
but, by revealing the contingency of content,
it authorizes hope.
This is the role of the artwork—to authorize hope,
but the very condition of possibility for this hope is the impossibility of its fulfillment.
The value of hope is that it has no use value.
Hope is the saddest of formalisms.
-
DEAR CYRUS, HE PUTS DOWN, DEAR REPETITION, while you were driving home from, how shall I put this, Mexico, driving dark pales into the panic grass, the kids got into the Roman candles, the ginger vodka, the Bible I gave your daughter was hollow, contained a, how shall I, pistol, two kinds of people in this world, do I smell incense, swimmers and nonswimmers, a child with puppy dog eyes asks if puppies go to heaven, the pistol proves untrainable, ruins the carpet, a no or no question, I guess I just assumed dogs dog-paddled, Dear, Dear, he puts down, Dear Me, when a dog drowns an angel gets its wings, and a long proboscis for sucking blood, no self-putdowns, she screamed, I pretended it was alive so I could pretend to put it to sleep, how shall I, sweetheart, no doggy heaven, put this, without a doggy hell.
-
Eldest sons dispossessed of ancestral tears mock the tears of the nouveaux riches. You call that weeping?
-
THE AVERAGE READER only perceives the initial and final letters of a word. He only reads the longest and most peculiar words in a sentence, intuiting the remaining language. The average reader often turns two pages at once, without perceiving a breach in narrative. He picks up a book, quickly flips through its pages, and believes it read. Conversely, he often reads unawares, will process and even vocalize a text he believes himself to be composing, while in fact reading skywriting, between the lines, on the wall. In your most intimate moments, my average reader, do you not rely on large cards held beyond the audience’s sight? Have you ever applauded without being prompted by an illuminated sign?
-
LASER TECHNOLOGY has fulfilled our people’s ancient dream of a blade so fine that the person it cuts in half remains standing and alive until he moves and cleaves. Until we move, none of us can be sure that we have not already been cut in half, or in many pieces, by a blade of light. It is safest to assume that our throats have already been slit, that the slightest alteration in our postures will cause the painless severance of our heads.
-
A SIDE OF BEEF ON A SILVER PLATTER, a slice of life on a silver screen. A beast with two backs, a war with two fronts. Búsqueda en Google an Abraham doll with realistic trembling. Her exit is emphasized by the receding lines of the parquet floor—who says art criticism is impractical? I’ll grant the world doesn’t need another novel, if you’ll grant the novel doesn’t need another world. The smugness masks a higher sadness, a sudden chiasmic reversal mistaken for love. I just want to be held, but contingently, the way the mind holds a trauma that failed to take place. Realistic suction, realism sucks. Ah, Bartleby!
-
For example, a syllogism subjected to a system of substitutions
allows us to apprehend the experience of logic
at logic’s expense.
Negative formalisms catalyze an experience of structure.
The experience of structure is sad,
but, by revealing the contingency of content,
it authorizes hope.
This is the role of the artwork—to authorize hope,
but the very condition of possibility for this hope is the impossibility of its fulfillment.
The value of hope is that it has no use value.
Hope is the saddest of formalisms.
-
DEAR CYRUS, HE PUTS DOWN, DEAR REPETITION, while you were driving home from, how shall I put this, Mexico, driving dark pales into the panic grass, the kids got into the Roman candles, the ginger vodka, the Bible I gave your daughter was hollow, contained a, how shall I, pistol, two kinds of people in this world, do I smell incense, swimmers and nonswimmers, a child with puppy dog eyes asks if puppies go to heaven, the pistol proves untrainable, ruins the carpet, a no or no question, I guess I just assumed dogs dog-paddled, Dear, Dear, he puts down, Dear Me, when a dog drowns an angel gets its wings, and a long proboscis for sucking blood, no self-putdowns, she screamed, I pretended it was alive so I could pretend to put it to sleep, how shall I, sweetheart, no doggy heaven, put this, without a doggy hell.
January 24, 2020
Cet ouvrage est très particulier et nécessite une grande culture générale, mais surtout d'un état d'esprit très ouvert. Ben Lerner nous propose une succession de poèmes très complexes qui mettent en avant les tares de la société du XXIe siècle.
"PARTOUT EN AMéRIQUE, sous terre et à la surface, dans des immeubles en flammes et des puits profonds, des avions détournés et des mines effondrées, les gens utilisent leurs téléphones portables pour obtenir, non de l'aide ni de l'air ou de la lumière, mais des informations."
Ben Lerner, à travers des textes pointus, essaie de nous faire prendre conscience qu'il est parfois nécessaire d'adopter un point de vue différent si l'on veut se rendre compte des vérités. C'est d'ailleurs toute la symbolique du titre de ce livre. Saviez-vous que le lacet est un mouvement de l'avion ? Qu'il consiste en un mouvement latéral du nez de ce dernier ? Mais surtout qu'on ne peut l'apercevoir qu'en se plaçant en dessous ou au-dessus de l'objet volant ?
La traductrice, Virginie Poitrasson, propose des traductions parfaitement maitrisées. Il s'agit d'un ouvrage bilingue où le texte en anglais est opposé à sa version française. Alors que je parle couramment la langue de Shakespeare, je suis émerveillé par la subtilité lors du passage à la langue de Molière.
Son rôle se s'arrête pas à la traduction ! Virginie Poitrasson nous propose une postface qui nous permet de mieux comprendre certains poèmes. Ces derniers ne sont pas accessibles au commun des mortels où l'on se demande vraiment si l'auteur lui-même comprenait ce qu'il était en train d'écrire.
"PEU IMPORTE LA TAILLE DU JOUET QUE VOUS FABRIQUEZ, un enfant trouvera toujours le moyen de le mettre à la bouche. Il n'y a pratiquement aucun élément de l'aire de jeu qui n'ait été dans la bouche d'un enfant. Toutefois, la première cause de mort par étouffement, pour les adultes comme pour les enfants, est le ballon rouge. Rien que l'année dernière, chaque américain est mort étouffé par un ballon rouge."
Toutefois, même si on prend le temps de nous expliquer certains textes, cette lecture ne peut que donner l'impression que le lecteur est un idiot qui ne comprend pas grand chose. On nous annonce des poèmes, on se retrouve avec des textes philosophiques. On nous propose d'avoir un oeil nouveau sur certains aspects de la vie, on se retrouve avec la constatation que la première cause de mort par étouffement est le ballon rouge...
Je ne peux pas clamer qu'il s'agit d'un livre qui restera dans la mémoire, mais il permet de plonger le lecteur dans un doute inédit, celui d'être incapable de comprendre sa propre langue maternelle.
"PARTOUT EN AMéRIQUE, sous terre et à la surface, dans des immeubles en flammes et des puits profonds, des avions détournés et des mines effondrées, les gens utilisent leurs téléphones portables pour obtenir, non de l'aide ni de l'air ou de la lumière, mais des informations."
Ben Lerner, à travers des textes pointus, essaie de nous faire prendre conscience qu'il est parfois nécessaire d'adopter un point de vue différent si l'on veut se rendre compte des vérités. C'est d'ailleurs toute la symbolique du titre de ce livre. Saviez-vous que le lacet est un mouvement de l'avion ? Qu'il consiste en un mouvement latéral du nez de ce dernier ? Mais surtout qu'on ne peut l'apercevoir qu'en se plaçant en dessous ou au-dessus de l'objet volant ?
La traductrice, Virginie Poitrasson, propose des traductions parfaitement maitrisées. Il s'agit d'un ouvrage bilingue où le texte en anglais est opposé à sa version française. Alors que je parle couramment la langue de Shakespeare, je suis émerveillé par la subtilité lors du passage à la langue de Molière.
Son rôle se s'arrête pas à la traduction ! Virginie Poitrasson nous propose une postface qui nous permet de mieux comprendre certains poèmes. Ces derniers ne sont pas accessibles au commun des mortels où l'on se demande vraiment si l'auteur lui-même comprenait ce qu'il était en train d'écrire.
"PEU IMPORTE LA TAILLE DU JOUET QUE VOUS FABRIQUEZ, un enfant trouvera toujours le moyen de le mettre à la bouche. Il n'y a pratiquement aucun élément de l'aire de jeu qui n'ait été dans la bouche d'un enfant. Toutefois, la première cause de mort par étouffement, pour les adultes comme pour les enfants, est le ballon rouge. Rien que l'année dernière, chaque américain est mort étouffé par un ballon rouge."
Toutefois, même si on prend le temps de nous expliquer certains textes, cette lecture ne peut que donner l'impression que le lecteur est un idiot qui ne comprend pas grand chose. On nous annonce des poèmes, on se retrouve avec des textes philosophiques. On nous propose d'avoir un oeil nouveau sur certains aspects de la vie, on se retrouve avec la constatation que la première cause de mort par étouffement est le ballon rouge...
Je ne peux pas clamer qu'il s'agit d'un livre qui restera dans la mémoire, mais il permet de plonger le lecteur dans un doute inédit, celui d'être incapable de comprendre sa propre langue maternelle.
October 17, 2024
I'll admit to being kind of a sucker for liking this book as much as I do, but reading these poems, after a couple books that didn't take risks and didn't seem to have a motivating purpose, really electrified me in the best possible ways.
This book alternates beyond "lyrical" poems-- basically, long lineated poems in sections, one section per page-- and sections made up of short, untitled prose poems (so, maybe one long prose poem? But I didn't read them that way). The "lyric" poems are laughably dry and anti-lyric, if you think that they'd have something emotional in them. They read, at first blush, like a philosophical argument boiled down to it's essence, something like a mathematical proof, though there are funny asides squeezed in there, like in a poem reckoning with Regan's legacy, we read "Blood is a vegetable when it forms part of a lunch." But each line here and in the other "lyrics" are dry, almost axiomatic statements, stacked on each other.
The prose poems, by contrast, were more fluid, slipping through voices and moods. Sometimes allusive, sometimes funny, almost confessional in moments, we might get full sentences or phrases, puns or weird asides. One after another, they twist and jostle against each other and you as the reader as you try to follow the train of thought that brought these ideas into contact. Tight, to gloss them takes five times as many words as the poem uses. In spite of these challenges, the poems are warm and funny and seem to emerge from a specific personality; they are not abstract, but very personal. Not all of them are great; some reach for a stupid punchline and are a little too aware of a reader. But still, what a read.
Good stuff.
This book alternates beyond "lyrical" poems-- basically, long lineated poems in sections, one section per page-- and sections made up of short, untitled prose poems (so, maybe one long prose poem? But I didn't read them that way). The "lyric" poems are laughably dry and anti-lyric, if you think that they'd have something emotional in them. They read, at first blush, like a philosophical argument boiled down to it's essence, something like a mathematical proof, though there are funny asides squeezed in there, like in a poem reckoning with Regan's legacy, we read "Blood is a vegetable when it forms part of a lunch." But each line here and in the other "lyrics" are dry, almost axiomatic statements, stacked on each other.
The prose poems, by contrast, were more fluid, slipping through voices and moods. Sometimes allusive, sometimes funny, almost confessional in moments, we might get full sentences or phrases, puns or weird asides. One after another, they twist and jostle against each other and you as the reader as you try to follow the train of thought that brought these ideas into contact. Tight, to gloss them takes five times as many words as the poem uses. In spite of these challenges, the poems are warm and funny and seem to emerge from a specific personality; they are not abstract, but very personal. Not all of them are great; some reach for a stupid punchline and are a little too aware of a reader. But still, what a read.
Good stuff.
Read
April 4, 2023DNF. But I don’t feel bad because I’m not sure there’s a book in here at all. Every 20 pages you’ll find a little gem. A phrase or shard of an idea, buried amidst the overly-used word “abstraction” and a winking hyper-specific cultural reference. But gosh, that word “ABSTRACTION” is the brick and mortar of this book, and yet it does so very little to congeal specificity or drive home meaning. Who’s this for exactly?
I suppose when you mine all day for fool’s gold all you really get is sunburnt.
I suppose when you mine all day for fool’s gold all you really get is sunburnt.
January 3, 2023
“Have you ever applauded without being prompted by an illuminated sign?” Stunning lines arise from Lerner’s cacophonous prose poems, exploring what new modes of art and being mean, or don’t mean, for us. I would love to hear what Lerner would say about his poetry being lifted from its text into a Goodreads review in my effort to demonstrate my (apparent) enjoyment of, and (at least subconsciously) my (claimed) ability to enjoy, his work.
January 18, 2024
Probably my least favorite of Lerner's poetry books -- so why did I re-read it? I think there's that thing of recalling a book to be better than it actually was, its most redeemable glimmers creating a false memory of the whole thing being better; such was the case with this book. Mixed bag. Sometimes it just feels like he is being random, wordy, almost juvenile. At other times it's really good.
November 10, 2019
I found this one to be much more enjoyable than the Lichtenberg Figures. It's incredibly playful and freeform. The last section in particular is a loosely strung together series of thoughts and observations, realist and surreal, strange and benign. The highlight for sure.
December 7, 2019
Lerner has a facility with prose that serves him well as a poet, or vice verse. Either way, I know I had to read this slowly and carefully to receive the full flower of its feeling and doing so has been one of the more pleasurable experiences of my life.
Anyway, run don’t walk, is my point.
Anyway, run don’t walk, is my point.
November 13, 2020
Lerner is at his best when crafting tight, clipped poems that take a familiar subject and turn it on its head. His insight into the way we physically orient ourselves to texts and information feels prescient.
June 2, 2023
Ben Lerner has a miraculous ability to create work that feels internally, intricately linked by webs of concepts that interest or obsess him. His use of repetition is genius. There's a feeling, reading these poems, of a ghostly connection being made between things just out of sight.
November 24, 2025
Lerner is better at prose than poetry and I can't help but feel he wants to engage in the exercise of political theory without having to undertake the rigour that form demands... you can always tell when a white boy has read Adorno bc he never shuts tf up about it.
September 26, 2017
Some beautiful stand-alone lines, but the poems themselves fall flat. They seem isolated, as if they were moments in a novel that never came to fruition.
December 26, 2017
Capito niente. Sembra uno scherzo...
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