In the museum, attention shifted from painting to painting, the eye forced around, so that it was impossible to focus on any single work. The nightmare was of a giant bluebottle fly which buzzed, “I’m all there is.” Where cars don’t go are shortcuts. My grandfather was forced to recognize his age when another, younger, man offered his seat on the bus. When one travels, one might “hit” a storm. The shoe must be tied to the ankle. As for we who “love to be astonished,” McDonald’s is the world’s largest purchaser of beef eyeballs. They went out with bows and armbands to shoot at the hay. It’s as easy as waves, slopping water. Traverse, watch, and cease.

My Life is book of poetry by Lyn Hejinian. First published in 1980, the work originally consisted of 37 paragraphs, each with 37 lines, composed when the poet was 37 years old. A revised edition came out a few years later, which increased all those numbers to 45. This was continued in an addendum of sorts, My Life in the Nineties. But these poems are not simple autobiography. Instead, they weave together sentences, sounds, and images into a collage that often feels just at the edge of understandability.

Chris and Suzanne use this book to begin reflecting on this cluster of episodes on Essays, Essaying, Stories, Storying. How does this poetry approach form and openness (of what might get included, of how this writing might be understood), and how does Hejinian’s poeming reflect upon certain kinds of essaying and storying?

Lyn Hejinian: My Life (includes My Life in the Nineties).

An overview of Lyn Hejinain’s life and work, including a longer excerpt or two from My Life.

Douglas Messerli’s introduction to an anthology of “Language“ Poetries might explain things that these poets were trying to do.

William Carlos Williams: Paterson.

Brian Dillon: Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction.

Virginia Woolf: Selected Essays. (The collected essays have been published over many volumes.)

George Orwell: A Collection of Essays. (His collected runs across four volumes.)

Kim TallBear‘s Critical Poly 100s appear in Shapes of Native Nonfiction.

Jackson Mac Low: Pieces o’ Six. (The book is very out of print, but the pdf is reasonably priced.)

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Next: J.R.R. Tolkien: The Return of the King. (Probably.)