The Lichtenberg Figures
This weekend I began reading Ben Lerner's The Lichtenberg Figures, winner of the 2004 Hayden Carruth Prize from Copper Canyon Press. I received the book in return for entering the contest, and it has sat on my shelf, between Denise Levertov and Li-Young Lee, since.
The book is a set of untitled sonnets. I made it through perhaps four before giving up. I'm not sure if I am pronouncing a sincere aesthetic bias here, or merely my ignorance, but I found the poems impenetrable, and, at their penetrable points, dislikable. The first poem begins this way: "The dark collects our empties, empties our ashtrays." I can see the iambic pentameter, the figures of speech (personification, polyptoton), and the juxtaposition of big, poetical language ("dark") with frat-house vernacular ("empties"). The poem continues: "Did you mean 'this could go on forever' in a good way? / Up in the fragrant rafters, moths seek out a finer dust. / Please feel free to cue or cut // the lights." Why are the rafters fragrant? What is the "finer dust" finer than?
These questions can be chalked up to the mystery of subjectivity, to the pleasures of ambiguity (is the "you" in the second line the same person who is invited to "cue or cut // the lights"?). But the last line seals the poem's fate: "The chicken is a little dry and/or you've ruined my life." Here the poem gestures toward the direct emotional utterance (reminiscent of James Wright: "I have wasted my life"), but flattens the feeling with the self-consciously banal declaration before it, along with the ultimate capitalist conjunction, "and/or." The poem is so mired in its sense of irony and its boring deconstructionist anxieties about language that it can't get to the point. Or it doesn't have a point.
Here's an equally irritating passage, from the end of the fourth poem: "O slender spadix projecting from a narrow spathe, // you are thinner than spaghetti but not as thin as vermicelli. / You are the first and last indigenous Nintendo." Here we have the language of botany (held precariously in the poem; note that Lerner studied at Brown with science-poet Forrest Gander) fused to the language of pasta, capped with a lame observation about a bit of the language of commerce. What do we get when these various elements come together? Nothing, that's what.
Or so it seems to me. As I said earlier (and despite my salty tone), I feel as though I must be missing something. I have friends whom I respect who I know would like this book, and I have long admired the work of Copper Canyon. (Former editor Sam Hammill was the judge for the HC Prize in 2004.) Am I limited in my way of reading? Am I a dope? Is Lerner offering something more subtle and sophisticated than I am willing or able to discern? Discuss.
Cheers.
The book is a set of untitled sonnets. I made it through perhaps four before giving up. I'm not sure if I am pronouncing a sincere aesthetic bias here, or merely my ignorance, but I found the poems impenetrable, and, at their penetrable points, dislikable. The first poem begins this way: "The dark collects our empties, empties our ashtrays." I can see the iambic pentameter, the figures of speech (personification, polyptoton), and the juxtaposition of big, poetical language ("dark") with frat-house vernacular ("empties"). The poem continues: "Did you mean 'this could go on forever' in a good way? / Up in the fragrant rafters, moths seek out a finer dust. / Please feel free to cue or cut // the lights." Why are the rafters fragrant? What is the "finer dust" finer than?
These questions can be chalked up to the mystery of subjectivity, to the pleasures of ambiguity (is the "you" in the second line the same person who is invited to "cue or cut // the lights"?). But the last line seals the poem's fate: "The chicken is a little dry and/or you've ruined my life." Here the poem gestures toward the direct emotional utterance (reminiscent of James Wright: "I have wasted my life"), but flattens the feeling with the self-consciously banal declaration before it, along with the ultimate capitalist conjunction, "and/or." The poem is so mired in its sense of irony and its boring deconstructionist anxieties about language that it can't get to the point. Or it doesn't have a point.
Here's an equally irritating passage, from the end of the fourth poem: "O slender spadix projecting from a narrow spathe, // you are thinner than spaghetti but not as thin as vermicelli. / You are the first and last indigenous Nintendo." Here we have the language of botany (held precariously in the poem; note that Lerner studied at Brown with science-poet Forrest Gander) fused to the language of pasta, capped with a lame observation about a bit of the language of commerce. What do we get when these various elements come together? Nothing, that's what.
Or so it seems to me. As I said earlier (and despite my salty tone), I feel as though I must be missing something. I have friends whom I respect who I know would like this book, and I have long admired the work of Copper Canyon. (Former editor Sam Hammill was the judge for the HC Prize in 2004.) Am I limited in my way of reading? Am I a dope? Is Lerner offering something more subtle and sophisticated than I am willing or able to discern? Discuss.
Cheers.
posted by Shane @ 8:50 AM
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