The Hatred of Poetry

The Hatred of Poetry - Paperback

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The Hatred of Poetry
  • The Hatred of Poetry
The Hatred of Poetry - Paperback

The Hatred of Poetry - Paperback

by Ben Lerner
$18.00
$18.00

Book Overview

by Ben Lerner (Author)

No art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore."

In this inventive and lucid essay, Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point of his defense of the art. He examines poetry's greatest haters (beginning with Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young) and both its greatest and worst practitioners, providing inspired close readings of Keats, Dickinson, McGonagall, Whitman, and others. Throughout, he attempts to explain the noble failure at the heart of every truly great and truly horrible poem: the impulse to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence. In The Hatred of Poetry, Lerner has crafted an entertaining, personal, and entirely original examination of a vocation no less essential for being impossible.

Author Biography

Ben Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, and is the author of two internationally acclaimed novels, Leaving the Atocha Stationand 10:04. He has published three poetry collections: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path.Lerner is a professor of English at Brooklyn College.

Number of Pages: 96
Dimensions: 0.4 x 7.3 x 4.9 IN
Publication Date: June 07, 2016
ISBN9780865478206
Author Ben Lerner
PublisherFsg Originals
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedJune 2016
LanguageENG- English
Pages96
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Literary Criticism Nonfiction Poetry

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Transcription

Transcription - Hardcover

Transcription - Hardcover

By Ben Lerner

About Ben Lerner

Ben Lerner is the author of eight previous books of poetry and prose, as well as several collaborations with visual artists. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.

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