The themes of Mean Free Path are also tied to the scientific concept “mean free path,” which refers to the average distance traveled between two events. In acoustics, it describes how waves travel between reflections in an enclosure, and in physics, it describes the average distance a particle can travel before impact with another object. In any case, it is most useful in systems that can be treated statistically. Lerner creates a system of colliding waves^iv, events, objects, and particles of language set to the measure of his form, which is put in motion every time the book is opened.
            Within this intricate system, the pieces of each movement are bound by the symbol for proportional variation in mathematical terms. The symbol looks like the sign for infinity with the right-hand parenthetical curve removed. It’s an open or broken infinity, suggesting a disruption of intimate bonds. Also, the mathematical equation for proportionality is typically written as a=cb, where c is a constant. In Lerner’s arithmetic, it could be said that a=Ari, b=Ben, and the constant of variation is language. And love. And the world, as it is to all lovers, is a function of their love.
            In another moment of metatextual candor, though, Lerner reminds us that “I planned a work / With appropriate delays, all signals seem / To issue from one speaker.” The key^v word, of course, is “seem.” As important as it is to remember that Lerner is not the only speaker, it’s also important to understand the nature of his structural strategies: “There is no way to read this / Once, and that’s love, or aloud.” Happily, the book keeps us coming back for more.
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^{i  Terms like “movement” and “volume” are appropriate, as will be seen, to the themes of the book.
ii The last two lines above are a crafty reference to the structure of the prose poems in Angle of Yaw. This poem appears on the verso, or left-hand page of the opened book, and if you hold it up to the light, you can see through the page and the “Mean Free Path” recto (right-hand page) poem becomes visible, creating a block of text the size and shape of a typical Angle of Yaw prose poem. Thus Lerner literally and materially communicates through the page, treating it as an interface and window.
iii Nothing says sorry, honey like a book-length love poem, even if the book is as devoted to distraction as it is to, um... ah yes, love.
iv  sound waves, waves of the hand, waves of information, waves “rippling / Across the manmade lake,” waves of salutation to John Ashbery’s early-’80s, long meditative poem on love, conscience and consciousness, “A Wave”...
v  “Key” is another word that gets a thorough workout, in all of its musical, hardware and symbolic connotations.}
 

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