Join us in J. Pierpont Morgan’s historic library for an evening featuring renowned poet and author Ben Lerner. For the annual Kenneth A. Lohf Poetry Reading, Lerner will read from his book, The Lights—a constellation of verse and prose, voice mails and vignettes, songs and felt silences, that brings the personal and the collective into startling relation. Written over a span of fifteen years, The Lights registers the pleasures, risks, and absurdities of making art and family and meaning against a backdrop of interlocking, accelerating crises, but for all their insight and critique, Ben Lerner’s poems ultimately communicate—in their unpredictability, in their intensities—the promise of mysterious sources of lift and illumination.
Ben Lerner is the author of four books of poetry (The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, Mean Free Path, and The Lights), three novels (Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04, and The Topeka School), and a work of criticism, The Hatred of Poetry. He has published several collaborations with artists including Blossom (with Thomas Demand) and The Snows of Venice (with Alexander Kluge). His essays can be found in Harper’s, Poetry, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker, among other periodicals. Lerner has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, Howard, and MacArthur Foundations. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (fiction), the National Book Award (poetry), and the National Book Critics Circle Award (fiction). Recent honors include the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for The Topeka School, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times.
The reading will take place in J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library, followed by a reception in the Rotunda. Doors will open 30 minutes before the program begins.
Please e-mail public_programs@themorgan.org with questions about accessibility.
Ben Lerner. Photo by Matt Lerner