Lyn Hejinian (1941–2024)

The poet Lyn Hejinian has died at the age of eighty-two. The New York Times has an obituary. It’s respectful and detailed, and it calls Hejinian a “central figure” and “leading light” of “the Language poetry movement.” They got that right.

But it has to be said: the Times published not one review of Hejinian’s poetry in her lifetime. The paper did reprint a published poem in 2023, and it published a snarky review of The Best American Poetry 2004, a volume that Hejinian edited: “‘People are writing poems!,’ each volume cries. ‘You, too, could write a poem!’”

Two sentences from Henjinian’s My Life (1987) that I like:

Long time lines trail behind every idea, object, person, pet, vehicle, and event.

And:

But a word is a bottomless pit.