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The Hatred of Poetry by Ben LernerNo art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore." In this inventive and lucid essay,

" Ben Lerner writes

In his prize-winning poetry collection Reliquaria

community and strangeness are lost to manmade systems

the collection presents a poetic world both familiar and jarring—one in which history

knees ripped

and the grind that is the American Dream

of “every quiet and colossal joy

/ Do you remember our civil defense drills

Rosal holds brutality up to the light

seeing grace

these punk poems embody direct action and invite the audience into the desire-filled slippage between public sex and demonstration

a child “assigned ‘woman’” and a boy “forced to call / himself a girl” love one another—from afar