The New York Times Weighs in on The Hatred of Poetry

"What works against him is the curiously airless, antiseptic nature of the enterprise," writes Jeff Gordinier for The New York Times about Ben Lerner in The Hatred of Poetry. "Coming upon certain passages . . . a reader might be forgiven for thinking that the book amounts to a contemporary version of the monastic debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin." More from this review:

When actual lines of poetry do emerge in the book, they pass like trays of delectable hors d’oeuvres at a cocktail party. It’s as though someone very smart is talking to you, or at you, making an argument in an emphatic tone of voice, and . . . ooooo, look, there’s a snack portion of Emily Dickinson, just out of reach! John Keats, Claudia Rankine, Walt Whitman: The paradox of “The Hatred of Poetry” is that it manages to induce a craving for poetry in the midst of analyzing how poetry repels people. Assuming a pose of wallflower-at-the-orgy detachment, Mr. Lerner so abstinently avoids the topic of beauty — and love, for that matter — that you reach a point where you actively hunger for it.

Mr. Lerner is all too aware of what his argument lacks. “I hope it goes without saying that my summary here doesn’t pretend to be comprehensive — poems can fulfill any number of ambitions other than the ones I’m describing,” he concedes on Page 76, when he’s already in the homestretch. “They can actually be funny, or lovely, or offer solace, or courage, or inspiration to certain audiences at certain times; they can play a role in constituting a community; and so on.”

Well, when you put it that way, what’s there to hate? In a sense, “The Hatred of Poetry” winds up being a meticulous tangent about how the people who have contempt for poetry are (mostly) missing the point. (Possibly what has them worked up is hatred’s flip side: They love poetry too much, and their love has soured.)

Find it all at The New York Times.