On the Hatred of Poetry
2025/09/27
Ben Lerner hates poetry, as indeed he believes we all do. But if hating poetry sounds dangerously philistine, do not worry. Ben Lerner hates poetry in a way that tracks the theories of the late poetry critic Allen Grossman, no less. Ben Lerner believes that each poem is really just an attempt to realize some more perfect and higher version of itself. The fact that we hate a poem is due to the great gulf between what we see on the page before us, and our intuitive understanding of what that poem should be. Any complaint you have about poetry is due to our inability to realize the perfection every poem grasps at, because that perfect poetry would have addressed whatever your complaint was.
If this argument seems vaguely familiar, it might be because it is not dissimilar to the Tenacious D song Tribute, in which the hapless comedy rock duo ward off a demon by playing the first thing that came into their head, which just so happened to be “The Best Song in the World”. Having escaped the demon, the duo try to recreate the song that had saved them, but fail. Thus they are left playing a tribute to that song, to stadiums full of fans.
There are a startling number of published reviews of Lerner’s short monograph, but I don’t think any of them have addressed the key problems with Lerner’s argument as far as I see them. The first is that there really isn’t a Platonic idea out there for each poem. Indeed, I suspect Lerner doesn’t even really believe this, much like Tenacious D didn’t really encounter a demon – it’s all just some fun bullshit to hang your hat on. The second problem is that even if we accept that no poem is perfect, that doesn’t explain why people should hate a poem. People like all kinds of imperfect creative work. This leads to the final serious issue: it isn’t clear why poetry in particular is stuck with particular problem, while other art forms seem to be fine.
I think that the real reason people hate poems – or at least a great many that they encounter – is that poems are too often pretentious little crossword puzzles with vague clues and no answers. To the casual reader it seems that most poetry written today have abandoned meter and rhyme, replacing them with obscurity and grammatical violation. Poetry written before the modernist revolution have buckets of meter and rhyme, but unfortunately suffer from archaic language and references that have lost meaning.
Lerner’s argument is well laid out and engagingly written. He discusses compelling examples of poetry (both good and bad) and might even serve as a nice introduction to poetry for certain readers. It is notable that when he discusses William Topaz McGonagall’s execrable “The Tay Bridge Disaster” his analysis draws upon a knowledge and intuition of the classic poetic form. His point is compelling when he talks of the desperation of the unpublished poet to get published, not even that they might earn any money, but out of a desire for validation. But it seems Lerner wants to avoid the argument that a decline in poetry might be due to modernism abandoning rather than evolving those forms.
Something happened to poetry, and it is the great literary whodunnit of the 20th century to identify the culprit. There is a hatred of poetry – a general aversion to the stuff – that we want to see addressed. It attracts conspiracy theories and crankery galore. Perhaps it is to Lerner’s credit that he doesn’t even try to address it.
Tiny Little People Living In Boxes
2025/08/09
July 26th marked the 250th anniversary of national mail delivery in the United States, and the USPS (founded later, in 1971) has issues a special set of stamps to mark the occasion. I enjoy a good postage stamp, and Ware’s art might not have the iconic quality enjoyed by classic stamps, but the medium is ideal for Ware’s particular artistic perversion: tiny panels. What is a postage stamp, but a tiny little panel in which to cram a picture? I’ve read enough of Ware’s work to know that the USPS probably had to specify in their contract with the artist that Ware could not subdivide the stamp into even smaller panels, because I bet that was absolutely his first instinct. Ware’s comics are pretty much fractals; if you peer closely enough at his panels you discover that they subdivide into even smaller panels. Although this set of stamps fit together into a larger design, they also read from left to right as a comic.
BenDrankin
2025/06/15
I have not posted recently, so it only seems fair to my readers that I give some kind of explanation. There are many things that might derail your in life in your thirties, and I suppose that you can already guess a likely culprit. But the truth is that I have been caught in the great paradox of American consumerism.
Earlier this year I decided I needed to buy a novelty T-shirt that would allow me to show my love of this land called America. I had already seen the shirt I wanted in a store window and thought it wouldn’t be too hard to find it online.
Unfortunately, Google was offering me possibilities.
At first I wanted the authentic, original design, but then I was overwhelmed by the sheer potential of the choice before me. I had to make an aesthetic judgement and no matter how many designs I looked at, none of them seemed to be as grand as the design I remembered seeing in a store window.
That last one was never really in contention, to be honest. And the following is only a variation of another:
This one gives me the creeps:
I appreciate the following one because it references actual Bejamin Franklin lore:
I don’t even think this one is Ben Franklin at all:
This one at least seems to come with a celebrity endorsement:
And then I discovered this:
The only way out of this hell might be to buy them all.