[I’m going to kill the president...] (Ben Lerner)
I’m going to kill the president.
I promise. I surrender. I'm sorry.
I'm gay. I'm pregnant. I'm dying.
I'm not your father. You're fired.
Fire. I forgot your birthday.
You will have to lose the leg.
She was asking for it.
It ran right under the car.
It looked like a gun. It's contagious.
She’s with God now.
Help me. I don't have a problem.
I’ve swallowed a bottle of aspirin.
I'm a doctor. I'm leaving you.
I love you. Fuck you. I’ll change.
Ben Lerner
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* 04.02.1979, Topeka, United States
lives in: , United States
The poet Ben Lerner grew up in Topeka, Kansas. He was awarded the Hayden Carruth Award for his first book The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), a cycle of fifty-two sonnets. During his stay in Madrid, where he lived in 2003 as a Fulbright scholar, he wrote Angle of Yaw (2006) for which he was named a finalist for the National Book Award. Today Lerner lives in Berkeley and teaches at the California College. He is co-founder of the magazine of poetry A Journal of the Arts. Lerner is the first American to win jointly with the translator Steffen Popp the Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie for the German translation of The Lichtenberg Figures.
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