Berrigan/Lerner

Examining these two books concurrently was an interesting exercise. The two "sonnet sequences" have,
superficially at least, a lot in common. Seeing how this relates to our seminar, I find the way
that both collections navigate the experience of moving through time to be striking. How does experience move through
time? The Lichtenberg figures are still-frames of the experience of being
struck by lightning, the problematic and violent sense of standing at one point in time and relating an
experience that spans many points. I think that this is what motivates the progress of both collections, they are attempts (and
failures) at capturing the experience of experience.
Both collections demonstrate the insufficiency of poetic form, specifically the sonnet, and show dissatisfaction
by attempting destruction of the form itself. As these collections progress, so too our expectation of sonnet progresses,
or degrades, as the case may be. Both books are pursuing the failure of established forms to convey our multivalent temporal
existence.
I admire deeply the attempt by both authors to subvert the historical importance of the sonnet form. No other poetic
form has inserted itself into Western culture quite so inextricably as the sonnet. All of history was at one point
conveyed by means of meter and rhyme. How can this possibly be the way to capturing experience? The limitation
of rhyme itself leaves little room to breathe. The authors are attempting to explore this failure by limiting
themselves formally and yet, neither author escapes the trappings of these established formal constraints. There are
occasions where the authors break from the traditional rules (Berrigan moreso than Lerner), but to move so completely
outside of the rules as Berrigan does in Sonnet XXXVI removes the author from any possibility of subverting the
form. One has to play by the rules in order to properly bend them. For Lerner, the sonnet in all its ugly
violence wins. He pushes the rules as far as he can, but in the end he is still a sonnet-maker. Berrigan on the
other hand almost completely degrades the sonnet at points, but to what effect? Many of the poems are nonsensical,
fragmented. Is it worth absolutely breaking the rules if one is left with nonsense?