The Lichtenberg Figures (Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging Poets) [Paperback]

Ben Lerner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2004 | Series: Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging Poets

The Lichtenberg Figures, winner of the Hayden Carruth Award, is an unconventional sonnet sequence that interrogates the relationship between language and memory, violence and form. “Lichtenberg figures” are fern-like electrical patterns that can appear on (and quickly fade from) the bodies of people struck by lightning.

Throughout this playful and elegiac debut—with its flashes of autobiography, intellection, comedy, and critique—the vocabulary of academic theory collides with American slang and the idiom of the Old Testament meets the jargon of the Internet to display an eclectic sensibility.

Ben Lerner, the youngest poet ever published by Copper Canyon Press, is co-founder of No: a journal of the arts. He earned an MFA from Brown University and is currently a Fulbright scholar in Spain.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ben Lerner is the author of three books of poetry and was named a finalist for the National Book Award for his second book, Angle of Yaw. He holds degrees from Brown Univeristy, co-founded No: a journal of the arts, and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press; First Edition edition (September 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556592116
• ISBN-13: 978-1556592119
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.1 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #422,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars most important book of poetry in a decade November 3, 2004

By Edward P. Skoog

Format:Paperback

In the 1998 Hal Hartley movie Henry Fool a perverted garbageman writes a poem that becomes the "best selling poem of all time," eventually earning him the Nobel Prize. Ben Lerner is not a garbageman, but he holds a degree in Political Theory from Brown University, which is close enough to the script that he ought to be in line for recognition by the Swedish Academy. Lichtenberg is a sonnet sequence chloroformed by the lies and swindles of the English language circa 2004. I adore this book. I adorate it.

Check out some of its lines:

What am I the antecedent of?

When I shave I feel like a Russian.

When I drink I'm the last Jew in Kansas.

I sit in my hammock and whittle my rebus.

I feel disease spread through me like a theaory.

I take a sip from Death's black daiquiri.

...

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.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Go Figure October 7, 2004

By Sam Pepys

Format:Paperback

While Lerner's work has much in common with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing--an interest in the materiality of language, in postmodern theory, in visual art, and so on--it also has the discursive precision of a more traditional poet--Auden, for example. The Lichtenberg Figures is one of those rare books in which beautiful and playful linguistic surfaces coexist with moments of sincerity.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars splendid September 15, 2004

By chris jackson

Format:Paperback

Ben Lerner has written a book both timely and timeless: it's political and yet deeply versed in various literary traditions. It's beautiful, but mean. Mean, but hopeful. Loving, but stern. This is a major work.