Language Poetry

This weekend I had to read one of the most confusing books I have encountered: My Life, by Lyn Hejinian. Not only did I have to read it, I had to understand it well enough to present it to my class. Understanding it was impossible at first glance because Hejinian seems to repeat herself and made me go in circles. When I got really frustrated with the book, I turned to Google to figure out what was going on.

It turns out, Hejinian is part of a movement called “language poetry.” A big part of language poetry is that the author’s presence is removed from the text. This means that what we get out of the writing is almost entirely up to us. She wrote what she wanted to, but there is no deeper meaning that the whole audience is supposed to magically “get.” Instead, each audience member will get what they want out of the piece and relate it to their life as they see fit. How versatile!

It was difficult to read this book because I try to figure out the meaning of most of what I read. Once I was able to shake that feeling, the book became much more enjoyable. Instead of searching for meaning, I let the meaning come when I would read a certain sentence or paragraph that had relevance to my life.

Skip to about 1:45 to see what you get out of Hejinian's writing here.

My First Encounter with Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire is a name I had not heard of in my three and a half years of college. Baudelaire was a French poet and translator who wrote and lived in the 1800’s in Paris. I have just finished reading his book Paris Spleen. Throughout this book, Baudelaire complains about the city live and the crowds it produces. There are stories of people getting lost due to the anonymity of growing cities. The theme that is most recognizable is that of the passage of time. Baudelaire explains mortality and pushes people to go out and seize the moment and to look at how they are spending their lives.
Looking beyond the interesting stories Baudelaire tells, the reason this book impacted my life is the style that the chapters are in. Each chapter is three pages or shorter, with most of them being about a page in length. There is no linear connection between each chapter; each one seems to tell its own story, and all are potentially interchangeable with one another. Clearly Baudelaire did not haphazardly place the pieces of the book together. He laid each part next to each other with intention and precision. On first read, I did not think much about the way the book was written, but if you keep in mind that Baudelaire had a plan, there are many more layers to the story and one can analyze the book further and further.

I plan to keep this form of prose poetry in mind when I am approaching a writing assignment. I find it to be a challenge to keep the chapters short and concise, especially because in many cases, writing can drag on forever. Authors have so much to say and want to provide every detail they can, but maybe there is a benefit to keeping it short sometimes.

If you want to read an example of Baudelaire's work, here you go.

Kathy Acker

Well, I might as well start off with one of the more intense books I've had the privilege of reading: Blood and Guts in High School, by Kathy Acker. I’m pretty far from a feminist, but due to my required reading lists this quarter, this year might be the year of change. Acker begins her book with anecdotes about her character, Janey, and the sexual relationship she has with her father. Complete with hand-drawn pornographic pictures, which makes this book hard to read on buses when people are peering over your shoulder. Though this book was assigned to me by a professor, I’ve had a hard time getting the images it has left behind out of my mind. One of the main themes throughout the book is that helpless ten year old Janey is subjected to atrocious treatment by the males she encounters in her lifetime.

After reading the painful novel, filled with more horror stories of Janey with her father, Janey as a slut, and, finally, Janey as a whore under the care of a Persian slave trader, I researched Acker to see what went through her mind when she was writing. In an interview found here, Acker states, “I don't remember. I write it to get it out of me. I don't write it to remember it.” This is a very good point. Blood and Guts in High School falls into the category of experimental fiction, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. The important word there is fiction. This work of fiction is a complex, dark story that Acker was able to formulate in her mind, and though it isn’t a true story, she was able to use her life experience and what she has seen to write novel.

Acker also states in the interview, “but I'm starting to worry about self-censorship.” When I read this, I was taken aback. Acker’s writing seems to be so off-the-wall out there that there is no way that she has held anything back. But still, she worries that she has. What I’m hoping I get from this reading is a slightly different approach to writing. I take many writing workshop classes and have ample space to express myself in a peer-reviewed setting. I hope I can begin to take my unique life experience farther and turn them into pieces of writing. Acker is inspiring in the way that she has awful, disgusting thoughts and things that have happened around her, but she manages to find a way to get these things out of her mind and onto paper. This process is ultimately beneficial on multiple levels: Acker can forget the sad memories and a new piece of brilliant literature is available to be read by the world.