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Mean Free Path (2010)

by Ben Lerner(Favorite Author)

4.19 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1556593147 (ISBN13: 9781556593147)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Copper Canyon Press

review 1: Mean Free Path is quite experimental, in the way it uses language to reconstruct and destruct ideas. The recombination of text is playful and opens up the poem for reinterpretations. The fragmentation is quite jarring. Lerner invites his readers to rearrange his own poems like building blocks. His lines are out of order and can be rebuilt to whatever dimensions we want them to be. His stanzas may look tidy at first glance, but once you dig into them, they are disorderly, with no clear beginnings or ends.The passage I chose to analyze in Mean Free Path for lines and line breaks is as follows:The good news is light is scattered suchToxicity means the paint must be appliedThe apparent brightness of the surfaceBy robots one atom at a time, bad newsIs the same regardless of the... more angle of viewI thought I should be the one to tell youSimultaneously, how monks sing chordsA kind of silence, what we might callThe military application of Cezanne(Lerner, 51)It’s easier to look at a particular passage rather than analyze the entire poem because his lines become more digestible that way. Note the way Lerner starts with “good news” as “light” and ends with bad news as the “same regardless of the angle of view.” He equates “a kind of silence” and “military application” as negative news.Many of Lerner’s end lines serve as cliff hangers (e.g.: “The military application of Cezanne”). They leave us frustrated and wanting to know more about a briefly mentioned subject. And how do we make sense of invalid arguments like “Toxicity means the paint must be applied.” Does he want us to rearrange the text to read how we want it to: “toxicity means a kind of silence”? His poetry is filled with false starts and no clear finish (e.g. “thought I should be the one to tell you”) Tell me what?!While reading fragmented sentences slammed together with no punctuation can be tiring and frustrating, in a way, Lerner’s poetry mimics the way we speak out loud (e.g. “Simultaneously, how monks sing chords”). We are not tidy in real speech, with proper noun-verb agreements and often end in mid-thought. Normally, we are engaged in conversation and answering someone, so our sentence replies are often fragmented when we talk. Lerner’s odd line breaks are examples of how language can break up when we become emotional and how language can also hinder communication. Lerner also writes how we dream, disjointed and incongruent.Lerner’s poetry is unruly with its lack of punctuation (notice there are only two commas in the above passage) and violent switch in subject matter (one moment we are talking about toxic paint, and the next line moves onto robots).Furthermore, his line endings don’t always feel meaningful (e.g.: “The good news is light is scattered such”) Why is he ending on “such” a weak word? He is breaking all the traditional rules of poetry. The line breaks are not audible. I cannot hear the music. I cannot hear the pause. I feel disengaged from the subject matter as it jumps frantically from “Toxicity” to “robots.” If line breaks “allow us to dwell in the image or idea of individual lines” as Instructor Maxwell points out, then Lerner’s does quite the opposite.
review 2: Ben Lerner is a little bit more experimental than the poets I typically enjoy, which is why I was somewhat surprised by how much I enjoyed this volume. It was one of the best collections of poetry I've read in several years.I'd hazard that Lerner's style in this book is not for everyone. In each of the book's four long poems, he carefully structures stanzas that seem to stream in or out of one of a half dozen or so thoughts that all seem to be going on simultaneously and influencing each other in jarring ways. It's difficult to say what is happening at a single moment in the poem, but indeed, that seems to be part of Lerner's overall goal. The odd disconnects and strange variations of recurring themes help to capture many of the contradictions of contemporary life, and Lerner does a masterful job of portraying the complexity, fragility, and interconnectedness of the world we live in.Obviously, poets like Lerner aren't always the most accessible. However, if you enjoy and appreciate contemporary poetry, I highly recommend this book. I found it well worth the effort. less

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