The Lights Quotes

“Abstraction is important, abstraction is necessary, otherwise we can't perceive the shapes—an ellipse, a triangle—that structure experience, provide its lattice, but she can be cold, the way stars are cold, beautiful cold light that bends around the sun, changing the star's apparent location, a problem of measurement, prosody, the ancient dream of conspiring (the car beeped and the lights flashed twice as I unlocked it)—a dream, not a theory. But in reality, I just mumbled something about having to get home, I'm sure your sister will show up soon. When I got into the car, he slowly raised an arm; I couldn't tell if the gesture meant goodbye or wait. Now I think it meant goodbye and wait.”
― Ben Lerner, The Lights: Poems

“Even though I was driving, writing, I shut my eyes, and they all became available to me: the venation of leaf and insect wing, the Lichtenberg figure in the grass where the discharge took place, delicate crazing in blue grass, the network of vessels against the black back of the lids, self-similar golden spirals, the fractals formed by riverbeds and neurons, honeycomb lattices, habits, all the beautiful conspiracies, which means "to breath together," the ancient dream of poetry.”
― Ben Lerner, The Lights: Poems