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Overview
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.
Synopsis
Winner of the Hayden Carruth Award uses "broken sonnets" to explore complex juxtapositions of contemporary culture.
Library Journal
The Lichtenberg figures are the fernlike patterns that appear on anything struck by lightning. And surely lighting strikes with this first collection, winner of the Hayden Carruth Award for Emerging Poets, which blends biting social commentary with unexpected images. (LJ 10/15/04) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.