To tell the truth, Dear Reader, I feel a little silly attempting to introduce Lyn Hejinian to you! Is she not the editor of her very own Best American Poetry annual collection (2004, my favorite of all!)? Author or co-author of roughly three dozen books and chapbooks of poetry and essays? Groundbreaking editor of Tuumba Press and now, Atelos? Noted translator from Russian, literary theorist, and Berkeley Professor? Furthermore, I’ve been fretting about writing this little paragraph all week, thinking I’ll have nothing unique or groundbreaking to say (silly too to fret, considering how generous of a person Hejinian is, as evidenced by her avid support of emerging poets and small journals and presses like Coconut! All I’ve come up with, partially inspired by the facebook-like biographical tone of the poem below, are a memory, an opinionated claim, and a little known detail. The memory: When she visited Atlanta, Lyn & I ate Thai food and talked about children and the process of adoption, Bush administration politics, and jazz. A claim: I believe Lyn Hejinian’s My Life is the most influential single volume of poetry by a living American author. (Hey, to make this feature more interactive, would you, Reader, like to comment on whether you agree?) A little known detail: For three years, unbeknownst for much of that time to Lyn herself, there was a blog devoted to reproducing a line from My Life every day. One of the things I admire most about her work is the way it changes from book to book—My Life is incredible, yes, but so is Oxota, Happily, A Border Comedy, all of her books, and her recent work (see Coconut 5). Oh, and finally, for a collective autobiography of 70s LangPo, including Lyn Hejinian, check out the Grand Piano series, just a click away.
11th Dream of July
Her waking state can be termed the true yellow cling peach of romance
In a word, anatomy
She will return as a harmless subject envied by none
Neighborhood: abandoned former battlefield
Social structure: artsy/inefficacious
Favorite leisure pastime: whining/watching rented movies
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings
They have been put in alphabetical order
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove
If it is a wild tune
I threw away punctuation
Never reject anything. Nothing has been proved
Back into the city to find that lost serenity
I woke from it. Nothing anywhere lacked definition
— Lyn Hejinian