海角大神

Ben Lerner鈥檚 sharp, learned, and thrilling new book is called The Hatred of Poetry. Yet this book 鈥� really a long essay 鈥� is equal parts defense and critique, and both defense and critique begin for Lerner from a simple premise: every poem, from Keats鈥檚 sensuous lyrics to Dickinson鈥檚 gnomic puzzles to William McGonagall鈥檚 horrid doggerel, is a failure.

Percy Shelley described poetry as 鈥渢he record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.鈥� Why does Lerner, an accomplished poet with three collections to his name, instead see poetry as a record of 鈥渞adical failure鈥�? Because, he argues, there is an irreconcilable tension between poetry鈥檚 potential and its actualization, between what it dreams of doing and what it actually can do.

鈥淧oetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and the historical,鈥� Lerner writes, 鈥渢o reach the transcendent or divine.鈥� But all it has to accomplish this flight is human language, and 鈥渁s soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms.鈥� As T. S. Eliot put it, 鈥淲ords strain,/ Crack and sometimes break, under the burden.鈥�

The fact that words strain, crack, and break might serve as the grounds for criticism: look at how this poem fails to reach perfection! But Lerner convincingly argues that the failures of individual poems 鈥� of all individual poems 鈥� also serve as the grounds for celebration. We only come to sense poetic perfection, Lerner argues, by measuring how far actual poems fall short: 鈥淲hen we experience a poem鈥檚 radical failure, we must be measuring it against some ideal, some Poem.鈥澛�

In fact, in a counterintuitive wrinkle, Lerner argues that poetic perfection can be felt most powerfully in the least successful of poems. Take William McGonagall鈥檚 鈥淭he Tay Bridge Disaster,鈥� often cited as the worst poem in the English language. Lerner performs a brutal dissection of McGonagall鈥檚 striving after poetic effects that seem not just out of his grasp but out of his zip code. But for Lerner, McGonagall鈥檚 failures serve a salutary purpose: 鈥淎 less bad poet would not make the distance between the virtual and the actual so palpable, so immediate 鈥� the more abysmal the experience of the actual, the greater the implied heights of the virtual.鈥� This is an argument straight out of negative theology (think St. John of the Cross), and it鈥檚 one that Lerner effectively repurposes for poetic ends.

Lerner is a fine critic, with a lucid style and quicksilver mind, and there are suggestive readings scattered throughout this book. Lerner speaks technically but clearly about Walt Whitman鈥檚 elongated poetic line and about Claudia Rankine鈥檚 use of the second-person 鈥測ou鈥� in her recent work. His reading of Dickinson鈥檚 鈥淚 dwell in Possibility 鈥� ,鈥� only a few pages long, contains the richness of an essay many times its length.

But perhaps most remarkable is just how entertaining, how witty and passionate and funny, "The Hatred of Poetry" is. The book is polemical, no doubt, but reading it is less like overhearing a professor鈥檚 lecture than like listening to a professor entertain a crowd of students over pints after class.

Like many good entertainers, Lerner begins with a story. In ninth grade, he was asked to memorize and recite a poem for English class. Now, Lerner is a poet and novelist. Then, he was a bit of a wise guy, and he responded to the assignment by asking the school鈥檚 librarian for the shortest poem she knew. She suggested Marianne Moore鈥檚 鈥淧oetry鈥�:

I, too, dislike it.

聽聽聽聽 Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one聽聽聽聽聽

聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 discovers in

聽聽聽聽 it, after all, a place for the genuine.

聽It鈥檚 an amusing anecdote, not least because, when the time for recitation comes, Lerner got the poem right. Try reading it out loud and you鈥檒l see why: no rhyme scheme, surprising line breaks, a weird reticence, signaled by the repeated 鈥渋t,鈥� that Lerner describes as 鈥渓ike a priest begrudgingly admitting that sex has its function while trying to avoid using the word.鈥�

But this comic story serves a serious argumentative purpose. After all, Moore suggests that it is only when we approach poetry with 鈥減erfect contempt鈥濃�� with, Lerner would say, an awareness of how it must always fail 鈥� that we can create 鈥渁 place for the genuine.鈥� Moore鈥檚 claim has stuck with Lerner, and it鈥檚 the kernel of this gem of a book. Only by attending to the many and inevitable failures of actual poems, Lerner suggests, can we come to sense the supreme success of the ideal poem. Only by hating poems can we come to love poetry.