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Quote by Ben Lerner

“When I was a kid and we played baseball we used to use that "eye black" stuff sometimes - that kind of grease you put under your eyes to reduce glare or something. We only used it, of course, to look cool; it's not like we were any better prepubescent athletes for reducing glare.”

Quote by Ben Lerner

Author

Ben Lerner, born on February 4, 1979, is an American poet known for his unique style and profound reflections on contemporary social issues. more

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“I remember I had this recurring dream that we were playing a night game and instead of eye black we had mashed up the glowing bodies of fireflies and put that under our eyes. So our faces were glowing - a kind of night vision.”

Kind Dream Body Eye Remember Faces Night Games Black Vision Glowing Recurring Firefly Night Vision Recurring Dreams

Author:Ben Lerner

“I think the parable is a peculiar way of saying that redemption is immanent whether or not it's imminent, that the world to come is in a sense always already here, if still unavailable. I find this idea powerful for several reasons. For one thing, it's an antidote to despair.”

Ifs Thinking World Way Stills Ideas Reason Powerful One Thing Despair Redemption Peculiar Antidote Parables

Author:Ben Lerner

“Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me - that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art - emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there's no escape from it, no outside.”

Thinking Art Matter Bigs Left Capitalism Thinker Totality

Author:Ben Lerner

“Every relationship can feel saturated by market logic or at best purchased at the price of the immiseration of others.”

Feels Logic Saturated

Author:Ben Lerner

“I'm increasingly on the side of thinkers like David Graeber who are talking back to this notion of totality and emphasizing how there are all kinds of moments in our daily lives that break - or at least could break - from the logic of profit and the modes of domination it entails. Zones of freedom, even if it's never pure.”

Ifs Kind Moments Sides Talking Break Pure Logic Notion Profit All Kinds Zone Daily Life Thinker Domination Totality Talking Back

Author:Ben Lerner

“I like to think - knowing that it's an enabling fiction - of those moments as fragments from a world to come, a world where price isn't the only measure of value.”

Thinking World Moments Values Fiction Knowing Fragments Enabling

Author:Ben Lerner

“I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity.”

Made Artist Culture Interest Stupidity Affirmative Fetish

Author:Ben Lerner

“I think that sexual pleasure and the weird color of the sky after a storm or the stream of tail lights across the bridge or the way silence can thin or thicken before music starts - all these things have to be harnessed by the political. The libidinal has to be harnessed by the political.”

Thinking Way Light Political Pleasure Silence Sky Color Storm Bridges Streams Tails

Author:Ben Lerner

“I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature's ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.”

Thinking Kind Literature Ability Fiction Bounds Contemporary Posts Blogs Sitcom Intellectualism Contemporary Fiction

Author:Ben Lerner

“Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass "conceptualism" that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context.”

Mind Firsts Kind Past Fiction Historical Contemporary Repeats Gestures Contemporary Fiction Minus Vanguard Crass Historical Context

Author:Ben Lerner