The Hatred of Poetry

“The question of whether poetry is work or leisure (or somehow both or neither) is everywhere in denunciations and defenses of the art . . . It’s precisely because of the contradictory nature of the poetic vocation – it is both more and less than work, its usefulness depends on its lack of practical utility – that we are embarrassed by and disdainful of the poet’s labor. ‘Poetry’ is supposed to signify an alternative to the kind of value that circulates in the economy as we live it daily, but actual poems can’t realize that alternative . . . Thus hating poems can either be a way of negatively expressing poetry as an ideal – a way of expressing our desire to exercise such imaginative capacities, to reconstitute the social world – or it can be a defensive rage against the mere suggestion that another world, another measure of value, is possible.”

– Ben Lerner, The Hatred of Poetry