"Lerner [is] among the most promising young poets now
writing."--Publishers Weekly
"Sharp, ambitious, and impressive." --Boston Review
National Book Award finalist Ben Lerner turns to science once again for
his guiding metaphor. "Mean free path" is the average distance a
particle travels before colliding with another particle. The poems in
Lerner's third collection are full of layered collisions--repetitions,
fragmentations, stutters, re-combinations--that track how language
threatens to break up or change course under the emotional pressures of
the utterance. And then there's the larger collision of love, and while
Lerner questions whether love poems are even possible, he composes a
gorgeous, symphonic, and complicated one.
You startled me. I thought you were sleeping
In the traditional sense. I like looking
At anything under glass, especially
Glass. You called me*. Like overheard
Dreams. I'm writing this one as a woman
Comfortable with failure. I promise I will never
But the predicate withered. If you are
Uncomfortable seeing this as portraiture
Close your eyes. No,* you startled
Ben Lerner is the author of three books of poetry and was named a
finalist for the National Book Award for his second book, Angle of
Yaw. He holds degrees from Brown University, co-founded No: a journal
of the arts, and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.
