Lyn Hejinian Death – Lyn Hejinian, an American poet, essayist, translator, and publisher, passed suddenly at the age of 82. She was frequently connected with the Language poets and is best known for her seminal work, My Life, and her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry. Lyn Hejinian was an influential force in the worlds of experimental and avant-garde poetics and a founding member of the Language poetry movement of the 1970s. Her poetic works were distinguished by an unorthodox approach to lyricism and a vivid depiction of the mundane. Her notable poetry collections comprised My Life (Burning Deck, 1980), The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn, 2012), and The Fatalist (Omnidawn, 2003). Among these collections were My Life and My Life in the Nineties (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). She taught in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and was a native Californian.
Similar to the majority of language writing, Hejinian’s work employs a theoretically sophisticated poetics. Although language writing is difficult to categorize as a movement due to its stylistic diversity, the majority of authors in this group are focused on non-standard, frequently non-narrative forms. Language writing is frequently concerned with progressive politics and social theory and is centered on the community. For instance, Hejinian’s work was devoted to investigating the political ramifications of conventional language usage. Her work, nevertheless, diverges from both mainstream and traditional left-wing political poetry and the traditional, affirming of identity poetry of the majority of left-wing authors. According to poet Juliana Spahr, the impact of Hejinian’s poetry can be more readily discerned through the application of Viktor Shklovsky’s theory of’making strange’ or the aphoristic assertion by language philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that ‘the limits of my language mean the limits of my world,’ rather than by comparing her work to the contemporary poetry typically featured in the Norton or Heath anthologies of American literature.
She was bestowed with the Chancellorship of the Academy of American Poets in 2007. A grant from the Poetry Fund, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Writing Fellowship from the California Arts Council, and a Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts are among her honors and awards. Hejinian, who teaches literature at the University of California, Berkeley, has additional experience as a publisher and editor. She served as editor-in-chief of Tuumba Press between 1976 and 1984, and co-editor of Poetics Journal between 1981 and 1999 alongside Barrett Watten. She serves as a coeditor for the publication Atelos, which features collaborations between poets and other artists across genres.