Quotes by : Ben Lerner

Our contempt for any particular poem must be perfect, be total, because only a ruthless reading that....

Laser technology has fulfilled our people's ancient dream of a blade so fine that the person it cuts....

Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and the historical—the human world of violence....

And when you are foolish enough to identify yourself as a poet, your interlocutors will often ask: A....

I believe she imbued my body thus, finding every touch enhanced by ambiguity of intention, as if it too....

Each member of this shadowy network resented the others, who were irritating reminders that nothing was....

Poetry": What kind of art assumes the dislike of its audience and what kind of artist aligns herself....

I tended to find lines of poetry beautiful only when I encountered them quoted in prose, in the essays....

The fatal problem with poetry: poems.

I had the endless day, months and months of endless days, and yet my return date bounded this sense of....