For the work,
the
work did nothing but invite us
to
relate it to
the
wall.
To be totally up-front and honest I’m not really sure precisely what it is I enjoy and/or appreciate about Ben Lerner’s poetry, but, from the first sampling of poems I stumbled upon in the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry a few years back, I was curiously (delightfully) both attracted and somewhat (somehow) baffled.
It’s not as though Lerner’s poetic language is difficult to understand, it isn’t. In fact, for the most part, it’s casual, almost conversational, yet there’s something about the way he constructs and combines his sentences that lends a level of complexity and open-endedness that invites — even demands — a reader’s close attention, involvement and free-wheeling interpretation.
Given the title of the book, this apparent casualness needn’t have been the case. As a term used in physics, in the kinetic theory of gases, the “mean free path” of a particle, such as a molecule, is the average distance the particle travels before colliding with another particle. Lerner could have chosen to explore this phenomenon using the discourse of physics, offering up abstruse sentences such as: “The cross section is a measure of the probability that a specific process will take place in a collision of two particles. For example, the Rutherford Cross-Section is a measure of probability that an alpha particle will be deflected by a given angle during an interaction with an atomic nucleus. In a way, it can be thought of as the size of the object that the excitation must hit in order for the process to occur, but more exactly, it is a parameter of a stochastic process.” Or: “In gamma-ray radiography, the mean free path of a pencil beam of mono-energetic photons is the average distance a photon travels between collisions with atoms of the target material.” Not that there’d be anything wrong with this approach, believe me. I mean, I’ve used the technique myself on more than one occasion and — rather than apologizing for employing such esoteric language — I’m fond of commending my efforts with the quote: “Facts are beautiful in themselves” (though I hasten to confess I can’t readily recall where or when I happened upon the quote or who originated it, hm... Curious. Hey, maybe it was me who said it first! One lives in the hope).
But no, I believe that Lerner was likely more interested in the imagistic and metaphoric nature of the occurrence as opposed to the science itself, since he’s chosen to eschew the jargon in favour of: “It’s the motion, not the material, not the nouns / But the little delays.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein said that a writer’s job was to describe, not explain. Lerner manages to do neither, he presents, and his sentences hang together along a thematic rather than a narrative schemata. I wouldn’t go so far as to say his sentences assume their final position in the same way as a bathtub full of triggered mouse traps do, flying chaotically in all directions and landing in some indiscriminate fashion on the floor when a ping pong ball is tossed into the pile, but there are similarities. As the blurb on the book’s back cover states: “The poems are full of discrete collisions — stutters, repetitions, fragmentations, recombinations — that track how language breaks up or changes course under the emotional pressures of the utterance.”
Let’s also introduce further literary conceits — why the hell not! — such as enjambment, broken narrative, and sentences placed out of order (so as to keep a mindful reader on their toes and second-guessing) and we arrive at poems that appear to be made up as they go along and — as Lerner writes — “invite us / to relate it to / the wall.”
But wait, did I hear someone mention Plato (or is it just me who twigged because I happened to recollect a pertinent snatch of Philosophy 101from my university days) and his famous allegory of the cave wherein all of us are only privy to seeing distorted and blurred shadows on the wall through our limited senses rather than being able to attain any true knowledge, which requires deductive reasoning and logic? Is Lerner actually requiring us to think? He doesn’t say. He doesn’t explain, simply drops the image, the notion, into the field of action: snap! snap! As he says later in the book: “I … / can’t look at it anymore, that wall / across which shadows play / Sorry to be vague / at such an hour.”
Mea culpa, mea culpa…
Of course, Lerner not only negates human senses and feelings as reliable sources of knowledge — oh, I should point out that he does, however (perhaps in a weak moment of remorse or nostalgia) quietly admit the old adage, ignorance is bliss, by saying: “We were happy in the cave” — he repeatedly negates himself, both as the all-knowing writer, and as the writer per se. Here’s a short list of examples: “For I was a fraud in a field of poppies.” “I’m writing this one as a woman / Comfortable with failure.” “I’m writing this one with my eyes closed.” “I’m writing this one with my nondominant hand.” “Waking, the sudden suspicion the teeth / In your mouth are not your own, let / Alone the words.” One of my personal favourite lines of observation goes: “I held the hand / Of a complete stranger during takeoff / Unaware it was my own.”
There are further examples, some quite comical, as you can see from the above. Lerner’s humour is maybe best described as droll, more often situational, though he does have a few zingers, such as: “We moved to Canada / Without our knowledge.” And: “Since the world is ending / Why not let the children touch the paintings.” And: “Since the world is ending, may I eat the candy / Necklace off your body?” So, okay, maybe not hilarious in a stand-up comic kind of way, more subtle-academic comic, but at least providing some levity amid the turmoil. As he says: “Funny / Strange, not ha-ha funny.”
And how does Lerner respond to all of this uncertainty, ambiguity, and mad clash of particles? He writes: “For I felt nothing, / which was cool, / totally cool with me. / For my blood was cola. / For my authority was small.”
Which I suppose leads me to another major reason why I am attracted to his work. As one judge from the National Book Awards wrote: “Lerner’s poems compact layers of thought into a language of emergency. No offhanded commentary, no prophecies, no reassurances. Instead, a sane voice orbiting the failed authority of a culture.”
Lerner closes his collection with just such a modest yet generous thought in mind: “Movements have become / citable in all their moments / With my nondominant hand / I want to give / in a minor key / the broadest sense.”
We should all attempt to achieve as much. Or as little.
