Calendar Home
Previous Reading:
« ELIZABETH ARNOLD
Next Reading:
ROBERT WRIGLEY »
|
|
Open Books: Events
November 30, 2006 07:30 PM
BEN LERNER
Mr. Lerner's new book, Angle of Yaw ($15 Copper Canyon), is a National
Book Award Finalist, so this will be a doubly celebratory evening. His
poetry makes thoughtful, comic, and touching use of contemporary American
public imagery and speech, risking the non sequitur. While much of the work
is rollickingly, intelligently funny, the emphasis is on intelligence. The
central section is an astoundingly moving poem examining the notion that the
relevance of art arises when it acknowledges its irrelevance. The piece
slides into a rumination on the meaning of the destruction of the Twin
Towers, "If we can close the event to further interpretation / we can keep
the collapse from becoming a masterpiece." Mr. Lerner seems to have mastered
a lyrical didacticism. While there is great pleasure to be had reading his
witty, thoughtful work, it instantly calls for rereading. Hearing him read
will be another way to savor it.
|
|
