The Lichtenberg Figures

by Ben Lerner

The Lichtenberg Figures, winner of the Hayden Carruth Award, is an unconventional sonnet sequence that interrogates the relationship between language and memory, violence and form. “Lichtenberg figures” are fern-like electrical patterns that can appear on (and quickly fade from) the bodies of people struck by lightning.

Throughout this playful and elegiac debut—with its flashes of autobiography, intellection, comedy, and critique—the vocabulary of academic theory collides with American slang and the idiom of the Old Testament meets the jargon of the Internet to display an eclectic sensibility.

Ben Lerner, the youngest poet ever published by Copper Canyon Press, is co-founder of No: a journal of the arts. He earned an MFA from Brown University and is currently a Fulbright scholar in Spain.

Genres: Poetry, Philosophy, Fiction, Ebooks, American, Language

53 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

About the author

Ben Lerner is an American poet, novelist, and critic. He was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of fifty-two sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures. In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry. The Lichtenberg Figures appeared in a German translation in 2010, for which it received the "Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie" in 2011, making Lerner the first American to receive this honor.

Born and raised in Topeka, which figures in each of his books of poetry, Lerner is a 1997 graduate of Topeka High School where he was a standout in debate and forensics. At Brown University he earned a B.A. in Political Theory and an MFA in Poetry. He traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain in 2003 where he wrote his second book, Angle of Yaw, which was published in 2006 and was subsequently named a finalist for the National Book Award, and was selected by Brian Foley as one of the "25 important books of poetry of the 00s (2000-2009)". Lerner's third full-length poetry collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010.

Lerner's first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was published by Coffee House Press in August 2011. It was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and New York Magazine, among other periodicals. It won the Believer Book Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for "first fiction" and the New York Public Library's Young Lions prize.

In 2008 Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British academic publication. He has taught at California College of the Arts, the University of Pittsburgh, and in 2010 joined the faculty of the MFA program at Brooklyn College.

Lerner's mother is the well-known psychologist Harriet Lerner.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book kicks ass. The title may be a little alienating, but it's totally appropriate. The poems are quick, sharp, fractal, and spooky:

"We had thought that by arranging words at random
we could avoid ideology. We were right.
Then we were terribly wrong. Such is the nature of California."

That's funny right? The poems handle meta-poetics in a really smart, accessible way. A surprisingly quick read.

[Tao · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this book. I can read this book in any mood and enjoy it I think. This book is sarcastic, self-conscious, afraid, and smart.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across Ben Lerner when I was looking for writers from Kansas. Lerner writes poetry and has published one novel, Leaving the Atocha Station. He is what I would call a very academic poet - very self-aware, intentionally creating structured poems, using words most readers will need to look up. (Goodness, take what I said and magnify it by 100 after I watched a video lecture of him speaking on poetic logic and structure.)

This set of poems is described as 52 "sonnets," although they aren't sonnets in the traditional rhyming scheme sense, but rather just in the number of lines each has. The sonnets are unnumbered and unnamed, making them difficult to reference. Over all there are many moments of humor, self-reference, paradox, and conflict. He mentions a few characters, one so often I tried figuring out who he is, and most people have decided he is an imaginary figure (Orlando Duran). A few of them are dedicated "To Benjamin," which some believe to be the poet himself.

He does mention Kansas a few times - Topeka several times. And then there is a biting description of Kansasians (is that what we call them?):
"...There is a suffering somewhere else,
but here in Kansas our acquaintances
rape us tenderly and remain unchanged...."

One of the "for Benjamin" sonnets includes this little segment which is my favorite:
"Sensation dissolves into sense through this idle discussion,
into a sense that sees itself and is afraid. Still, we must finish our coffee
and partition epiphany
into its formative mistakes...."

[Augustus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda gas, kinda ass, insufficiently libidinous

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

oh i'm really interested in this, alienating quatorzains, difficulties 4 us to gesture at & say check out what this guy's doing, what's all that. & so much of Lichtenberg is violence, frothy & angular or subterranean sometimes, it's vividly Iraq, the long tower-shadow. Suburban consciousness? flipside of bernadette's sexy coin? I don't think this is to say he's channeling, talismanic america, whoever she is, but it falls out that way like Gummo. Anyway I'll come back. what a figure. an undergrad ?

[Rand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems. A series of free verse sonnets
telling you what you should
and should not think—

obvious epiphanies and oddball
normalcies treading cultural water
tossing out the baby with the bath

tub gin grin who
is keeping count? who
counts the counters or the countings?
this is not a review.

[Krzysztof · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wrote a pretty aggressive review of this the other day, but I'm in a better mood now. Plus, I watched this video where Lerner has a lot of interesting things to say about writing poetry and comes across as less of a bullshit artist than in The Lichtenberg Figures. I still think that he went down the wrong path with this book and is extremely alienating in his style, but I'm willing to accept now that that wasn't necessarily intentional.

You can't blame me, though, when an actual stanza from the book is:

In the early 00's, my concern with abstraction
culminated in a series of public exhalations.
I was praised for my use of repetition. But, alas,
my work was understood.

Alas. I mean, who wouldn't get pissed? And by the way, people, those were some of the most coherent lines in the book ("You are the first and last indigenous Nintendo." See, I'm getting mad again).

Having watched the video, I suppose it's possible that what he meant was that his earlier poems were surfacey and that people weren't able or didn't need to "intuit" them, as he says of someone else's work in the talk. Unfortunately, even if this is the case, I think he failed.

The reason I love Dean Young so much is that his abstractions are able to be intuited. It seems like a miracle to me and I'm not even sure where you'd start to get your readers to be able to really do that. Lerner's cut and paste method, however, surely isn't it.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lerner's explorations of balancing both humorous and elegiac tones, very lose and fractal concepts within a loose sequence of sonnets work here. Lerner's unnumbered and unnamed sonnets are not linear but built on each other in both topical and tonal dialogue. The effects are disorienting and alienating, but the seemingly random patterns are ordered in a way that creates art like the referenced patterns of Lichtenberg figures. Like other poets who write in sequences that can be rich in both personal, historical, and literary allusions such Michael Palmer, people will tend to react strongly to this work because of what it demands of them.

[Lucas Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first poetry of Lerner's I've read and it fits into the way he discusses poetry in the novel of his I read a few months ago. The first thing that struck me about this series of untitled lyrics were their cleverness and humor. There is an abiding self awareness that winks at the reader, saying isn't it grand that we are smart enough to be here together. The Juxtapositions, elevated vocabulary, and fleeting bits of pop culture effluvia that serves are stray reference points next to other poets helps to cut the pretentiousness that I expected to be my biggest take away. Mostly, I think that Lerner is smart and funny and not opposed to embracing selective aspects his midwesterness tat a writer of his stature and talent a generation or two ago might have kept more quiet. While this collection was a great, quick read, it mainly made me want to read more of his novels.

[TheBookWarren · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 Stars- Classic Lerner seen here. Modern, filled with self assurance and self doubt simultaneously. The set as a whole feels like it was written in very short time, as a collective which is undoubtedly what he intended.

Wonderful language & each has a genuine undertone of regret. Great to read in long sessions which is rare for what I’ve read of poetry.

The more I study BL the more I fee that he is without doubt a true a modern genius!

[vivienne ✧ · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Sensation dissolves into sense through this idle discussion, into a sense that sees itself and is afraid. Still, we must finish our coffee
and partition epiphany
into its formative mistakes.”

i liked some of the poems; some were thought provoking, some were funny. most were just mediocre imo

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brisk and thoroughly enveloping collection of poetry, which I found somewhat poignant after reading Lerner's "Hatred of Poetry" critical essay. Based on what I log on here, I obviously tend to focus on film books and genre stuff, but I always find this more self-consciously "literary" stuff refreshing. It gets me out of my comfort zone, and - again - I just love the way Lerner writes (his last effort, "The Topeka School," has been in the queue for a while now).

[Emily Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes things are undeniably pretentious ... but I like them anyway. This was that. I like the way he oscillates between obscure/difficult/high brow lines, and very straightforward ones. Parts made me laugh out loud (for example, an unexpected Brittney Spears reference amidst the high brow confusion.) Parts of this are very clever. Poetry either holds my attention or it doesn't, and I'm still trying to pinpoint why. I basically couldn't put it down.

[Nicolas Shump · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my money, Ben Lerner is one of the best, most intelligent, and most ambitious poets writing today. This is a collection of edgy sonnets that totally plays with the whole history of the sonnet form. Ben is also a great guy to have a beer with. He's originally from Topeka and edits a literary journal called No.

[Robert McTague · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not too easily impressed, and I am impressed. That this was his first volume of poetry makes it even more amazing. I'll have to read through it several times, of course, and yes, my vocabulary got a workout as well (also uncommon). I'll have to come back after having more time to think about it.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You are the first and last indigenous Nintendo."

[Jack Michalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

All sonnets. Genuinely moving at times, witty, funny, vulnerable, irreverent, sometimes a little tone deaf but who doesn’t miss?

Some favorites, especially the first one:

——

To forestall a suicide, I plant all manner
of night-blooming genera. I compose this preemptive elegy.
I describe the sky as “noctilucent.” In this very elegy,
the sky is thus described.

To prevent slow singing, I rub the body down
with acacia. I pledge to hide
the man who struck the body. I threaten to use
the same rope or opiate but minutes after.

To keep the neighbors from delivering all manner
of sympathy casserole, I water the Scotch.
I hide the Drano. I no longer park
in the garage.

I discovered the body prone, check it’s breathing.
Go back to sleep.

——

Beauty cannot account for how the sparkplug works.
But if the sparkplug doesn’t work, it is more beautiful.
If I display a sparkplug, it is sculpture.
A sparkplug sculpture may be a real sparkplug,
but the sculpture refers to other sculptures, while the sparkplug refers
to an engine cylinder.
The word “sparkplug” is an altogether different matter.

Thus I return to the subject of the museum.
A woman is crying in the Surrealist wing.
Beauty cannot account for why the woman is crying.
But because the woman is crying, she is more beautiful.
Is the woman therefore a work of Surrealist sculpture?
A sculpture of a woman may be a real woman,
but the sculpture refers to other sculptures, while the woman refers

——

You say “ablution, I say “ablation.”
You say “gloaming,” I say “crepuscule.”
You say “organ of copulation,” I say “organ of excretion.”
You say “forget-me-not,” I say “scorpion grass.”
While you were at tennis camp, I was finger-banged

by a six-fingered man. I replaced your dead goldfish
with another dead goldfish. I put your dad in a headlock
and your mom in a home. I ate your juicy motherfucking plums.

Irreconcilable differences: you disliked the Richter show.
Your gait is characterized by an exaggerated flexion of the knee.

I really don’t want to do this over the phone.
But I also never want to you see you again.
So I paid Ben Lerner to write you this poem
in language that was easy to understand.

——

Idle elevators of grain. Plenty of parking. Deciduous trees
of the genus Ulmus, known for their arching branches and serrate leaves
with asymmetrical bases. Gunplay in our houses of steak,
houses of pancakes. Dried valerian rhizomes. Bunk weed. Osage.

Deliberately elliptical poetic works reflect a fear of political commitment after 1968.
A fear of deliberately elliptical poetic work reflects…

Home considered as a system of substitutions: “Plenty of parking.
Deciduous elevators of the genus Gunplay,
known for their arching bases and serrate pancakes
with asymmetrical rhizomes.” The activation of the white space of the page

reflects a fear of the industrialization of print media.
To fear the activation of the white space of the page

is to fear poetry.
Idle elliptical commitment. Deciduous repetition. Plenty of parking.

——

She left town. Rain ensued. Crows pecked out my contacts.
I tried everything: Prozac, plainsong. I won her back.
It didn’t help. I shot myself. It didn’t help.
A beauty incommensurate with syntax
had whupped my cracker ass.

When I was fair and young and favor graced me
my fingers were in everybody’s mouth.
Ten fat fingers in ten fat mouths.
Now my fingers just point stuff out.

She shot herself. And, with a typically raucous cry,
her glossy, black body fell from the typical sky.
It fell like rain. It was rain. Fat drops of rain rained down
into my fat awaiting mouth.
It didn’t help.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stars will be adjusted for inflation
so that the dead can continue living
in the manner to which they've grown accustomed.

p. 18

Perhaps what remains of innovation
is a conservatism at peace with contradiction

as the sky transgresses its frame
but obeys the museum.

p. 22

Ben Lerner's The Lichtenberg Figures is a bit of a tough book of poetry. It's a sonnet sequence ostensibly about growing up in the midwest, but it's frustrated, as many of us were in the early 2000s, with the way the world seemed to work. Reading it now made me almost nostalgic for a kind of frustration that now seems so okay, so naïve, so less harmful to the fundaments of society, rather than to the bodies of people across the world. It's not funny in the way Patricia Lockwood can be, nor is it particularly melancholy. It's more abstract than that, more systematic. I enjoyed it, and I'll need to come back to it and his newer The Hatred of Poetry.

[Nick Milinazzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"True, a great work takes up the question of its origins / and lets it drop. But this is no great work. This is a sketch / sold on the strength of its signature, a sketch / executed without a trial. // True, abandoning the figure won't change the world. / But then again, neither will changing the world."

In this sonnet sequence, Lerner plays with the idea of language, memory, and form. There is a dialectical tension to the prose. Through repetition and juxtaposition, he breaks down and rebuilds the notion of form and content. I'm not typically a fan of this style of poetry -- the surreal, almost random configuration of words. But with Ben Lerner at the helm, you are assured of a safe and unforgettable journey. Amongst others, I sense the influence of DFW in some of these stanzas (although that could be my own bias showing). Lerner can turn from playful to pensive in a single line. His mastery of language and vocabulary is awe-inspiring. Some may finds this work verbose or arrogant -- I find it brilliant. 5 stars.
Meditative. Puckish. Potent.

[chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetry has yet to emerge.
The image is no substitute. The image is an anecdote
in the mouth of a stillborn. And not reflection,
with its bad infinitude, nor religion, with its eighth of mushrooms,
can bring orgasm to orgasm like poetry. As a policy,
we are generally sorry. But sorry doesn't cut it.
We must ask you to remove your shoes, your lenses, your teeth.
We must ask you to sob openly.

...

Perhaps what remains of innovation
is a conservatism at peace with contradiction,
as the sky transgresses its frame
but obeys the museum.

...

To fear the activation of the white space of the page
is to fear poetry.
-- The Lichtenberg Figures

[Luke Gorham · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2. Poetry as flex. Informed by and also subverting classic sonnet structure and content, this collection feels like an inevitability as Lerner's first effort. Reflective of his considerable dictive skills but with little of the measuredness he has girded his more recent work in, this is an academic, forcefully opaque, intellective collection trading in meta-poetics and the nature of art with humor, cynicism, irony, and...a smidgen too much self-satisfaction. Still, envious he could write like this before he was 25.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange little volume. Lerner is clearly having fun playing with language, and he clearly knows quite a bit about language, but it doesn't always make for great poems. Sometime he gets in his own way and ruins a piece. Sometimes he's very funny. Sometimes it all seems so knowing and purposeful. "I place a terminal raceme of fragrant, funnel-shaped perianths / beside the mile marker where Orlando flipped his Honda. / I fuck his girlfriend and induce epistaxis in his homeboy."

[Madeline Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

really fascinating play with language throughout these nameless poems, lots of ideas that go straight to the heart even when via semantics there isn't a full understanding of what is being said explicitly. some of it is a bit nonsensical in general ("you are the first and last indigenous Nintendo" coming to mind most immediately) but i could come back to this collection time and time again. poetry as dysfunctional limb here in many ways. love the almost sonnets

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What have I done? What have I done
to deserve this? What have I done with my keys,
my youth? What am I going to do
while you’re at tennis camp? What are we going to do
with the body? I don’t do smack. I don’t do
toilets. I don’t do well at school. I could do
with a bath.”

Sometimes funny sometimes too knowingly clever I will revisit this book again. Which is about as high of a praise I can give it. It’s thicker than skim milk., and I prefer whole.

[Madeleine Dodge · Rating 4 out of 5]

recommended by a dear friend, this collection of poems kept me company on the metro and for that I am greatful. ben lerner has a way of pulling sense out of nonsense and bearing so many sudden truths on the page. would recommend for anyone looking to read something fresh, bright, and punctuated.

[Aaron Marsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Challenging in form and content. I just fucking love Ben Lerner, I think he's got so much going on in every sentence. We stan a brainy queen! Seriously though, he pushes me, makes me jealous, causes my mind to stretch and achieve more. I couldn't ask for more from an all time fav author.

(A)

[Gaby]

not sure how i felt about a lot of these poems - sometimes the abstraction felt confusing rather than provocative. but sometimes it worked for me! i have a huge amount of respect for ben lerner, and would find it fascinating to hear analysis of these poems from someone who gets it more

[Harry Palacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Abstract oblique cunning they hunt in hiding they are school girls dressed as lambs dressed as gay boys- this selection of poems features precocious poems of anti-symbolism or true fornication forbidden by the state

[matthew w · Rating 4 out of 5]

maybe a new favourite from Mr B. Lerner, at least re: poetry. sonnets are kind of the perfect form for him, strangely.

excellent way to make a start on my new years resolution, which is to write one sonnet.

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

The actual sonnets were kind of… cringe? To me. But somehow the collection gets better after 9/11 is invoked and the political stakes of the poetry are clarified… which is maybe my first time ever saying this about a work of literature