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The Hatred of Poetry Paperback – June 7, 2016

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Ben Lerner (Author)
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Ben Lerner (Author)
3.2 out of 5 stars 10 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 96 pages
  • Publisher: FSG Originals (June 7, 2016)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0865478201
  • ISBN-13: 978-0865478206
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.3 x 7.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsDisabused Fantasy
By Larry G. Bierman on June 8, 2016
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I read The Lichtenberg Figures some weeks ago and was impressed. When I heard the Lerner was releasing a book title The Hatred of Poetry I had to pre-order it. It arrived yesterday and I finished reading this evening. I am not disappointed.
An essay centering on Mariann Moore’s “Poetry,” he quotes the 1967 version—the short version. Her collected poems starts with the line, “Omissions are not accidents.” I have always loved that line. It indicates that the volume has blank spaces. It is this space that Lerner defines as Poetry. We hate it because it does not and cannot exist.
Learner explores the gap between what poetry is as a dream and what it is in reality. He explicates what Moore means when she tells us that if one reads poetry with perfect contempt “one discovers in/it, after all, a place for the genuine.”
While I think of poetry as entertainment (because I am such an audience), I appreciate the exacting efforts poetry practitioners bring to their art—how seriously they think about it. Lerner is a fine poet and has interesting ideas about his art.
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5.0 out of 5 starsI, too, dislike it
By Norbert Hirschhorn on June 17, 2016
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Ben Lerner's view of poetry is bracing, smart, original and humbling. All poetry must fail, he posits, because language is too limited to express our deepest feelings. We can dream we've written the perfect poem, but when it comes to setting it down, we fail (or, as Coleridge claimed, some jerk from Porlock comes along to spoil our ecstatic vision). Non-poets complain that poems are too complicated or abstruse (or they were ruined for poetry by a high school teacher insisting on meaning and memorization); traditional poets bemoan the loss of rhyme and meter; post-modern poets argue for purity of sound, and total freedom of form. That is, everyone hates poetry because it cannot possibly succeed, regardless of type. Yet, as Lerner's presiding genius, Marianne Moore, wrote:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.

That is, we should read poetry with no illusions, even with contempt for its failure, but to recognize that so many poems stir something in us, give solace in bad times, delight elsewise. Robert Frost said a poem should begin in delight and end in wisdom. We shouldn't expect any more.
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5.0 out of 5 starsMost brilliant poetry essay that wasn't written by Dana Gioia
By Orson Scott Card on July 13, 2016
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
The most brilliant essay on poetry that wasn't written by Dana Gioia - and that's saying a lot. For poets who wonder why nobody wants to read their work, and for those who love older poetry but have little use for most contemporary works. It also explains much to people who hate all poetry pretty much equally, but feel that this must mean they're deficient in some way. This gives you a road in, or a guiltless road out, as you prefer.
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3.0 out of 5 starsUseful Insights Into Poems and Poetry
By Kem White on July 24, 2016
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is a small essay in book form. It provides some useful insights into poetry and reading poetry. For me, these kind of books have limited "staying" power but the 1.5 hours I spent reading it was worthwhile.
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1.0 out of 5 starsI'm glad I didn't pay more than a few dollars for ...
By J. Dorazio on August 2, 2016
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I'm glad I didn't pay more than a few dollars for this one -- not really sure what the point of Lerner's essay is. Not specific enough to be considered true literary criticism, more of a rambling diatribe. The blurbs in the margins are irritating and distracting -- was that intentional?
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