The Hatred of Poetry

  • A Death Blow Can Be a Life Blow to Some

    What does it mean to be carried away? To be captured, carried off, liberated? To lose control of oneself? Lerner doesn’t show concern for questions like these. More generally, The Hatred of Poetry takes little interest in the rarities of…

  • Us, as Humans, Feel Like Failures

    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,…

  • The Hope Whose Death It Announces

    Poetry is defined by a failure to live up to the hype it generates, promising divine transcendence through a medium that is essentially human. This is the paradox Ben Lerner articulates in his dissertation on The Hatred of Poetry. At…

  • Lerner, too, Dislikes It

    Over at Flavorwire, Jonathon Sturgeon gives us a write-up of Ben Lerner’s new monograph, The Hatred of Poetry: a loathful ode to that to which we are in debt. And, read Ben Purkert’s Rumpus review of The Hatred of Poetry here.

  • The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner

    The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner

    Ben Purkert reviews The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner today in Rumpus Books.