#hejinian

[wally-b-feed]

Anthony Fineran (B 1981), Belle Hejinian, 2022

[wally-b-feed]

intellectual art hejinian

[emilieideas]

My Life & My Life in the Nineties, Lyn Hejinian (2013)

“These creatures are compound and nothing they do should surprise us.” (5)

“We were seeing a pattern or merely an appearance” (6)

“Every family has its own collection of stories, but not every family has someone to tell them.” (7)

“It is possible to be homesick in one’s own neighborhood. Afraid of the bears.” (16)

“At the time, I saw my life as a struggle against my fate, that is, my personality.” (36)

“to be nearly useless but at rest” (38)

“I suppose I had always hoped that, through an act of will and the effort of practice, I might be someone else, might alter my personality and even my appearance, that I might in fact create myself, but instead I found myself trapped in the very character which made such a thought possible and such a wish mine.” (38)

“The white legs of the pear trees” (39)

“I thought that for a woman health and comfort must come after love.” (39)

“That sense of responsibility was merely the context of the search for a lover, or, rather, for a love.” (39)

“I mentioned my face because I made that way wonderfully like a shadow I do not despise.” (40)

“We have come a long way from what we actually felt.” (41)

“descriptive sincerity” (42)

[emilieideas]

The Language of Inquiry, Lyn Hejinian (2000)

“The language of poetry is a language of inquiry, not the language of a genre. It is that language in which a writer (or a reader) both perceives and is conscious of the perception. Poetry, therefore, takes as its premise that language is a medium for experiencing experience.” (3)

“the emphasis in poetry is on the moving rather than on the places—poetry follows pathways of thinking and it is that that creates patterns of coherence.”

“You ask that whatever comes out of the books on the shelf be new, but that is impossible. Certain themes are incurable.” (10)

“one wants not just oneself but also one’s response to life to be unprecedented. What one feels, what one experiences, then, would have more density and weight of life, more vivid clarity, than what others feel or experience. My love, my suffering, my insight, etc., would become incontrovertible—the ultimate assertion. But it would insist only on the present. To be unprecedented is to take a particular relation to the past—the relationship of no relationship at all. This constitutes a romance, and, periodically, in pursuit of it artists have courted the special status of madness. But the notion that insanity gives proof of the intensity of one’s experience may be a misunderstanding of the case. It is just as likely that insanity represents the divorce of its victims from the actual, producing a state in which a private reality replaces the common one.” (10)

[thetargetbird]

A heart can be wild, what a terrible thing to drive at 85 to the future already dead. Am I too focused on time? Perhaps a different smile would help, but passing into and out of anything is how rashes start, and what did I expect trying to trounce through an unplowed field? The sun moves unexpectedly, which is false, I know, but then again I can't explain a 24 hour day anymore than I can use a fingertip to get closer to the sea. Technology gets useful at this part, with quick explanations of rhythms and cycles and contractions of gravity, but a heart can be wild and avoids such bellowing acts of vengeance against unfettered awe. So goes it that splitting a sandwich might be a truer form of love, and so sharing a taco is practically martyrdom for it, but the commandments get fleshed out over drinks and lost on the way home - the closest anyone comes is splitting the bill, gratuity not included. Next to that I believe in being a good sport, since the heart's wild might be immortal and thus dead for our purposes here -- it's shameful but if the sun still wakes everyday to find his friends gone without goodbye or even throwing away their bottles then I suppose trying to find new conduits through which to live in even a modicum of extra- ordinary is manageable. What's not clear, though, is who buys the coffee, grinds, sets, pours, feels best at the first sensation of fires rocking the body awake, nobody expects baby birds to fly through their throats so early, but I like it, yes I do! Their ambivalence is victory over our lack of control, like the fitted sheet coming undone or the dime-sized drip from the pot characterizing the kitchen like a mole. No edges are sharper in the wild than pine needles, the heart fragrant and untouchable until you get to the root, the juxtaposition most fragile when you think about it. Field notes are helpful if you fill them in yourself, the brain named itself and reinterprets everything it sees, what, like, 10 times before you notice the flock of birds roosting at dusk, so a new name for everything is less a song title than an imperative. A heart can be wild, don't you know, distinct and ragged but answering to the same word, distinguished, perhaps singularly, by what you had for breakfast today.

[thetargetbird]

Once there was a day whose details stayed in brain Nothing of its morning comes to mind though it might yet come to sleep Well, don't we know it Its beauty counts for nothing, I suppose The concept of nature is merely compromised aesthetics Sensual ethics far in bulk transcend it So I didn't notice then but I notice now in retrospect that the peaches have displaced the kiwis near the market door They call the stars to listen Dry hands and cold shoulders, elastic bands, a fire siren, gun shots There were once three girls, a strong one, a smart one, and a pretty one They dreamed of love which came to mind and shuddered It was not until the end that they finally could attend to it Hi, there, Mrs. Oaks, the brawny butcher said Where did you study to be a butcher An entrepreneur never relents nor can a farmer be lazy The education of a mind is built from continual substitutions Constant change figures

from The Book of a Thousand Eyes by Lyn Hejinian Speaking of dreams, Hejinian is so good at engaging them qua poetic trope as well as writing dream narratives.

[sciencepoetics]

from A Mask of Motion by Lyn Hejinian.

[sciencepoetics]

from A Mask of Motion by Lyn Hejinian.