The Lichetenberg Figures/ The Sonnets

Looking up “Lichtenberg figures” and discovering that they are branching electric discharges that appear on insulating materials. I was drawn to the fact that these discharges are 2D and 3D and are examples of fractals (a fractal being many things such as something that “is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language.”). While all this language is certainly beyond me in many ways, not knowing much about any type of physics or geometric language, I did see a distinction in the way these poems seem to have multiple meanings (2D, and 3D, etc) in their content as a whole and in particular words such as Kate pointed out. The undertone of many poems seemed to be that of creating a piece of writing, or practicing a way of life, as a lover, a politically invested person, or someone invested in language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenberg_figure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals

Reading Ben Lerner’s book was a lot like listening to him talk in real life. It is often over my head, but in an interesting way which makes me want to learn more about what he’s talking about. It’s often sarcastic, humorous and beautiful as well. I admire his every day language juxtaposed next to words and concepts I barely understand. “…a brain left lace from age or lightning. / The chicken is a little dry and/or you’ve ruined my life (1). The simple “and/or” in the middle of this humorous line does a lot, showing that even life’s smallest moments have the potential to intersect with or push against something greater than themselves. Answering Kate’s question as to if the poem on page 3 could be about the act of writing poetry, I think it definitely could be. I noticed, even at this early stage in the book, that he is interested in how things are made, these electrical discharges, theories, organizations, economic foundations, cookies, sandwiches, dog doors… They all seem to be made of pieces of other things, which were also made of pieces of other things. “I built a small door in my door for dogs” (3). Everything seems to have multiple purposes, meanings, just like poetry does for different people or for one person who sees different aspects or different content in the same language.

Moving to Ted Berrigan...

Berrigan’s poetry in “The Sonnets” is pretty striking. From the beginning, there is a lot of repetition of words throughout single poems and throughout the book’s entirety. It almost seems a little overdone to me, but as the book continues on it seems to have a purpose. There is everyday language mixed with scientific and natural language, talk of the night and the sky, mixed with nursery rhyme-esque language (“Is there room in the room that you room in?) all in the first poem. Often, lines don’t seem to fit in sequential order with one another… having “I read / It’s 8:30 p.m. in New York…” (2). There is no punctuation stopping the first statement, yet there’s capitalization on the It’s and the speaker is most likely not reading that its 8:30, but this strange juxtaposition is most always beautiful and sometimes does seem to have more powerful of meanings, as in a few lines down this poem “and the day is bright gray turning green / feminine marvelous and tough” (2). Thinking of a day with these adjectives is fresh and beautiful. The drug references in this poem make these juxtapositions seem entwined with the content of the poem, as in the way sonnet IV describes NYC and Brooklyn and the language is scattered, confusing, full of sights and smells like the city would be.

These poems are powerful because in a way they seem to be snippets of a life, of multiple lives, intertwined lives in multiple places. Often a poem contains multiple speakers, a French phrase, something that seems clipped from a newspaper, often only half of the whole of its importance. The natural is mixed with the sexual. There are questions posed, and while single sonnets stand linguistically by themselves as lovely pieces of art, its hard to stop reading the sequence, and its hard to stop trying to connect the people and the images that are repeated throughout the book.

Nicolette