Ben Lerner talks with the Guardian about life in Brooklyn, octopuses, and poets:

“Poets really haven’t gotten the news that the novel is also dead,” he says, of the opinion among some poets that writing in prose is a capitulation to market forces. Still, the poets tolerated a single attempt—even Ashbery wrote a novel. “It’s like some weird homeopathic myth, that you avoid the novel but you are allowed to write one,” Lerner says. “You can write one novel in your life as a poet.”