Berrigan/Lerner Response

Lerner's The Lichtenberg Figures and Berrigan's The Sonnets seem a very ideal pairing. Both struggle with & against form, as Ryan has pointed out in his response, and I agree that Lerner seems to "win." Berrigan's book collects disjointed words, phrases, characters, et cetera and then forces these things into the lines and shapes necessary to the sonnet. As a reader, it becomes convoluted and, sometimes, contrived. The language isn't quite smooth enough to create an aesthetic of sounds, and its lack of rhythm isn't regular enough to seem an intentional device. From this, it must be that the words, and meanings are what the poet seeks to emphasize. The juxtaposition of images and language is so disparate the most common effect is confusion. Berrigan sometimes writes one image per line, but other times the images are enjambed or fragmented into whatever room is available in a given line. And this seems to me to be one of the major headaches of this work - it becomes too chaotic. My initial thought was that the inclusion of white space, the use of line breaks could help with the pacing of a peace, and provide the reader with a moment to collect himself. Berrigan eventually does make such a move in the later half of the book, and I found it helpful, but was disappointed because it seems the notion of "fitting" into the sonnet form remains too apparent in the poems.

Lerner, too, seems to struggle against the form, but I found his effort much more manageable as a reader. While images and language are still jarring and surprisingly juxtaposed, there is a maintained familiarity in the use and contradiction of cliche. I saw the same effort in Berrigan's book, concerning his inclusion of location and (often culturally-relevant) characters, but Lerner's decision to use language as the primary connection for the reader seems a wiser choice. For example, Ben uses the character of Orlando Duran several times, and the character can be as unknown and ambiguous yet revealed through familiar language. It is more difficult (for me at least) to gather meaning of language out of the positioning of a character than visa versa.

The major success of both of these books is the engagement of the reader in details. The narratives built across these works are apparent, but it becomes necessary to draw out every detail and repeated image/word/phrase/et cetera in order to gain the story being told. This is why the poems don't necessarily have titles, because they are all parts of one whole. Of course, this is true of most books, but in the case of The Lichtenberg Figures and The Sonnets, the notion of the whole is what is most important.