<DIV><p>&ldquo;Lerner [is] among the most promising young poets now writing.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Publishers Weekly</i></p><p>&ldquo;Sharp, ambitious, and impressive.&rdquo; &mdash;<i>Boston Review</i></p><p>National Book Award finalist Ben Lerner turns to science once again for his guiding metaphor. &ldquo;Mean free path&rdquo; is the average distance a particle travels before colliding with another particle. The poems in Lerner&rsquo;s third collection are full of layered collisions&mdash;repetitions, fragmentations, stutters, re-combinations&mdash;that track how language threatens to break up or change course under the emotional pressures of the utterance. And then there&rsquo;s the larger collision of love, and while Lerner questions whether love poems are even possible, he composes a gorgeous, symphonic, and complicated one.</p><p><i>You startled me. I thought you were sleeping<br>In the traditional sense. I like looking<br>At anything under glass, especially<br>Glass. </i>You<i> called </i>me<i>. Like overheard<br>Dreams. I&rsquo;m writing this one as a woman<br>Comfortable with failure. I promise I will never<br>But the predicate withered. If you are<br>Uncomfortable seeing this as portraiture<br>Close your eyes. No, </i>you<i> startled</i></p><p><b>Ben Lerner</b> is the author of three books of poetry and was named a finalist for the National Book Award for his second book, <i>Angle of Yaw</i>. He holds degrees from Brown University, co-founded <i>No: a journal of the arts</i>, and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.</p></DIV>