Mean Free Path Book

This book of poems is divided into 4 parts: "Mean Free Path", "Doppler Elegies" and then "Mean Free Path" and "Doppler Elegies" following once more. In physics, the "mean free path" of a particle is the average distance it travels before colliding with another particle.

In some ways, I noticed the poetry in this book alludes to this measure in physics with lines like:

"At a canted angle of enabling failures
The little collisions, the path of decay"

But the thing about what Lerner does with his poetry is that he experiments with it in such a way so that you get lines of unfinished phrases grouped into stanzas. It almost appears as if Lerner wrote this work initially as a coherent piece, and then decided to be adventurous by reordering the entire thing so that it makes no sense whatsoever.

But I won't shoot it down because the lines were actually somewhat graceful and pleasant. He combines phrases that are entirely unique and unheard of with the utterly everyday and most cliche expressions. There are even places where you can combine some lines and make sense of what is said in your own way. In this way, the work is interactive. It's not one to read passively.

There are hints and glints of a suicide, a plane ride, and his beloved Ari which recur throughout the work. In a way, it's like he's trying to say something very personal, but it never really comes together because the lines are so mixed up that you can never really get at what exactly is being said.

In some ways, it's almost like when people say "There just aren't any words to express how it feels." Lerner uses language so that it never meets up in a way so that you can grasp it. It's elusive and tantalizing, like trying to take hold of reflections in water. You're just never going to be able to.