9 Comments
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Gregory Forché's avatar

I agree with this. leaving atocha is really the best of these books, though all are extremely strong. The trouble with Topeka is its own success- it shows that the main beneficiaries of “me too” were men who just needed to make small adjustments to pull in the crowd…

Michael Edward Barry's avatar

Great essay. Thanks for this. I must resist the urge to avoid authors that loud cynics have declaimed as uncool.

Manuel M. Novillo's avatar

Great stuff, Adam. This novel is my first Lerner and I am loving it.

Matt Watts's avatar

In the related field of best serious author photo face, Ben ranks strongly.

Michael Preedy's avatar

I haven’t read any Lerner but would be interested to after reading your piece. Where’s best to start?

Adam Fleming Petty's avatar

Leaving the Atocha Station!

ARX-Han's avatar

Great piece! Very talented guy but he's holding back too much. Needs to be more deranged, to retardmaxx.

Amperkix's avatar

Absolutely what I think

Greg's avatar

Brown was also where C.D. Wright taught, and presumably advised Lerner on his poetry, until her untimely death in 2016.

Sidenote: C.D. Wright's work is AMAZING! Everyone should grab the new selected from Copper Canyon immediately and give it a read. Her then-partner, Forrest Gander, wrote some pretty damn good stuff too, and you should similarly check it out. In a sign that she knew how to pick 'em, Wright was also the executor and guardian of the poetic estate and corpus of her onetime lover Frank Stanford.