Lerner Attempts to Reinvent Form in ‘Mean Free Path’

Ezra Pound once declared that to write free verse was “to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.” Free verse has become one of the dominant styles of poetry—encompassing the long rhythmic lines of Allen Ginsberg and the short, understated verse of current Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. Amid this prevalence of fluidity in poetic style, “Mean Free Path,” Ben Lerner’s third book of poetry, stands out in its reactionary innovation. “Mean Free Path” is an experiment aiming for the reconstruction, not dismantlement, of poetic forms. Lerner’s book invents a new form as recognizable and systematic as the old ones.

Since the beginning of his poetic career, Lerner has experimented with form and structure. His first collection, “The Lichtenberg Figures,” is entirely composed of sonnets, while his second, “Angle of Yaw,” which was announced finalist for the 2006 National Book Award, is made up of prose poems. Having explored these two extremes, Lerner is now searching for something in between—a form that includes the structure of sonnet and the freedom of prose.

The result of this search is his new collection, “Mean Free Path.” The book is comprised of intimate verse narratives, addressed to a certain “Ari,” who seems to be the narrator’s confidant, or perhaps a lover. The narrator touches on thoughts about everyday life and discusses beauty, love and literature as if he were lying in bed beside Ari, chatting before sleep, almost whispering.

The strength of “Mean Free Path” lies in its air of intimacy. The subjects of the poems range widely from the most quotidian matters­—the act of looking up from reading a book—to the gravest ones—the death of a friend. By including the trivial alongside the serious, Lerner creates the illusion of conversation with a close friend. He writes, “I want this to be... a little path / For Ari... That’s why I speak / In a voice so soft.” The familiar tone, or the “voice so soft,” supports the content of the collection.

In order to deliver on this intimacy, Lerner has attempted to invent an entirely new form, rather than following the pre-existing structure of the sonnet or writing with the openness of free verse. He strictly regulates meter, punctuation, and stanza breaks, but not without constant and subtle variations, which permit his poems to avoid what Pound denounced as the “sequence of a metronome.”

The form, along with the content, renders the book a single, prolonged conversation. At first glance, “Mean Free Path” appears to be a collection of short, untitled poems. But here, the absence of titles is significant; the obscured distinction between poems is strengthened by Lerner’s intentional thematic repetition. That is, thoughts that were mentioned at the beginning of the book are repeated throughout the book over and over again—often in the same exact words; somewhat as if Lerner were attempting a modernized sestina.

Lerner’s dynamic use of punctuation gives an added shape to his sequences. His lines are almost always broken by a caesura, dramatically moderating the flow of his verse. “It cannot save us. But it can remind us / Survival is a butcher’s goal. All hands / To the pathos. Let the credits,” he writes. The poet explains that this is “a structure of feeling / Broken by hand.” Alternatively, Lerner also often leaves out punctuation, leaving sentences unfinished, imitating the rhythm of real conversations. The last sentence of the excerpt mentioned above—“Let the credits”—in fact ends there, abruptly.

At times, however, Lerner seems to be too preoccupied with the notion of the synthesis of form and content. One of the most frequent subjects of the collection is its own form. “Do not hesitate / To cut the most beautiful line in the name / Of form,” Lerner writes. Not only do these recurrent comments on the poetic form become redundant, but they also subtract attention from other sentiments expressed in the collection.

There are also instances where Lerner’s voice becomes too colloquial. Lines such as “removing the suicide / From the speed dial,” or, “There are some cool pics online,” detract from the other accomplishments of his work. These phrases solely function as a distraction from his more serious and beautiful ones such as, “we could spend our lives / Parting in stations, promising to write / War and Piece.”

Nevertheless “Mean Free Path” succeeds in creating a fresh style of poetry. Despite some wrong notes, Lerner has undoubtedly achieved a moving manifestation of our daily contemplations. Its structure, innovative as it is, manages to narrate the everyday sentiments of human life as they actually occur: in bits and pieces.