"Fear and Loathing in the Postmodern English Department"
 

Michael,

I do like your article and agree with it.

But to avoid being associated with the post-mortem mods you might want to ask the publisher to clean up the copy errors in your article. No doubt they are not yours.

Don:

If you're referring to the brackets around one of Lerner's poem titles, that's the way Lerner published it.

For anything else, I'd be grateful if you would PM me. Once I have read a piece over and over I have great trouble proofing it.

Thanks!

Mike

MJ, you have persuaded me on the merits, or lack thereof, of Lerner's essay, poetry and outlook, but I was already leaning that way.

I just had one abiding thought as I read that, Mike:

I'm so glad I know you . . . and not Ben Lerner! As a passionate lover of poetry I won't be wasting a single cent on The Hatred of Poetry ''book''. It's not worth reading.

You are.

Jayne

What I don't get is how people can honestly admire and award Lerner's work. I wouldn't want to write like that. I wouldn't want my students to write like that.I don't want to read it. But evidently enough people in the right places think it is wonderful. Are they trolling us? Trolling beauty and truth? Trying to kill poetry? Or am I thinking too much? Could it just be only connections matter? I am not just venting here. I am asking questions to which I I honestly seek answers.

"The bitterness of poetic logic is particularly astringent because we were taught at an early age that we are all poets simply by virtue of being human. " I have a general suspicion that Mr. Lerner is a BS artist, which can go undetected in rarefied academic circles.


Hmmm, nobody ever told me when I was a kid that we are all bicyclists simply by virtue of being human. I had to learn from my pals, and it was a long, painful summer before I caught on.

Likewise for writing, painting, or any other art or craft. Some people might be "naturals", but discipline and practice make a big difference in the end for just about everybody.

I might read Lerner's book at a public library on a rainy afternoon, but I'm in agreement with Jayne.

I have some reservations about the "postmodern" label--Lerner's a bit young and doesn't particularly tub-thump where the appropriate theories are concerned. He's what you get thirty years on when the novelty has worn off and it's just another way of not seriously talking about anything. And of course, Lerner mentored Ocean "The Most Overrated Poet in America" Vuong.

Quincy adds a valid qualification which meshes easily enough with Michael's original review. Lerner does not seem a particularly sharp theorist of the post-modern; he is, rather, a practitioner of it.

What saddens me are readers who come to poetry looking for truth, beauty, art and something so simple as joy in language, but instead they find Lerner. I've got three degrees in English lit and currently teach it, but when I look at the dominance of the post-modern in the contemporary academy, I doubt I would make the same choices today that I did back then.

I don't fully disagree with your arguments, Michael, but the point about the Lamp poem seems a bit dense -- isn't it clearly a critique of marketing, if nothing more?