It just means that we have a desire for our language to be able to perform in a different way than it performs, and we have a desire for a reconciliation between the individual and the social that poetry can’t fulfill, but can help made felt.

For Lit Hub, Cody Delistraty interviews Ben Lerner on his new book, The Hatred of Poetry, discussing the hatred of poetry as a somewhat perverse expression of idealism, how Lerner’s fence-walking between genres affects his output, and ekphrasis.