The CounterText review : Ben Lerner's The hatred of poetry

Abstract

The premise of Lerner’s short book is simple and uncompromising. Poetry is generally hated, and it is hated because it never makes good on the unspoken promise of poetry. And yet one of the reasons we continue to be drawn to poetry is that in its failure, in its inadequacy, it is able to affirm more powerfully than anything else its ideal potential. This is a strange / love hate relationship. We love the promise of poetry, but hate actual poems because they ultimately fail to deliver on that promise. And yet we need what we hate because, at least in the case of poetry, it is the object of our hatred that brings us closest to that which we desire.