Synopses & Reviews
Poetry. "I am very much interested in abstraction in language, in pushing language to the point that it becomes fact itself rather than some intermediary or condition."-Lyn Hejinian Written between November 20, 2000 and September 24, 2001, SLOWLY explores a longer breath than Hejinian's previous poetry, and a more variable, percussive rhythm than her previous prose. The distinction between Sentences and Lines; that which pitches a work towards poetry or secures it within prose, is more difficult here than before, and whatever it is, it stops. It backs up and picks a new direction:"A pelican becomes a cloud, a cloud becomes / a wire, a wire binds Shostakovitch to the stained wall / of a small room becoming this in other words that / becoming my decision
About the Author
Lyn Hejinian is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her groundbreaking book of poetry, MY LIFE, published by Sun and Moon/Green Integer, has had five reprintings from 1980-2002. Her most recent books include A BORDER COMEDY (Granary Books, 2001), SLOWLY and THE BEGINNER (both published by Tuumba Press, 2002), and THE FATALIST (Omnidawn, 2003). The University of California Press published a collection of her essays entitled The Language of Inquiry in 2000. In the spring of 2007, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley.