March 12, 2024
Photo by Gloria Graham
Lyn Hejinian, one of the foremost poets of the last half century and a professor in the English department for two decades, died at her home on Saturday, February 24th. Born Carolyn Frances Hall in Berkeley on May 17, 1941, Hejinian grew up in Berkeley and later Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Harvard University in 1963. Apart from her time in Cambridge and a five-year period from 1972-1977 during which she lived with her family in Willits, California, Hejinian lived in the Bay Area for her entire life. Hejinian was a central figure among Language poets, an influential formation of experimental and avant-garde writers whose writings have helped to shape North American and Anglophone poetry for the past 60 years. In 1976, Hejinian founded Tuumba Press, which published early work by writers including Carla Harryman, Rae Armantrout, Susan Howe, and Bruce Andrews, as well as some of Hejinian’s own early work. Among Hejinian’s many books (see below for a full bibliography), My Life is perhaps the most celebrated: an anatomization and refutation of autobiography as genre and method, My Life is one of the most important books of the past half century. First published in 1980, when Hejinian was 37 years old, My Life contains 37 sections, each of which contains 37 sentences; a second edition appeared in 1987, with 8 8-sentence sections added to the text. In addition to her books of poetry and her pair of influential volumes of essays – The Language of Inquiry (2000) and Allegorical Moments: A Call to the Everyday (2023) – Hejinian was a prolific collaborator, translator, editor, and publisher. With Barrett Watten, she edited Poetics Journal from 1982-1998, which became a key venue for considerations of avant-garde poetry and poetics. One of Hejinain’s most important literary relationships was with the Russian poet Arkadii Dragmoschenko, which began after the first of a series of trips to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. These trips, by Hejinian and other poets, established an important and longstanding link between Language poets in the US and experimental writers in Russia. In addition to Tuumba Press, which continued to published volumes long after the initial, celebrated series of 50 chapbooks that appeared between 1976 and 1984, Hejinian founded Atelos Press in 1995, with Travis Ortiz; and with co-editors Claire-Marie Stancek and Jane Gregory, she started Nion Editions in 2016. In the coming months, two additional volumes are scheduled to appear: The Proposition: Uncollected Early Poems, 1963-1983 (Edinburgh University Press) and Fall Creek (Litmus Press). Just before her death, Hejinian completed Lola the Interpreter.
Hejinian joined the Berkeley English department in 2001 as Professor of English, and for two decades she was a crucial and beloved member of the English department. Her energy and generosity were seemingly limitless. In addition to poetry workshops for undergraduate and graduate students, Hejinian taught a wide variety of lecture and seminar courses, including undergraduate seminars on the Objectivist Poets, the Harlem Renaissance, the work of Gertrude Stein, and “Slow Reading”; lecture courses on 19th and 20th century literature (45C) and contemporary American literature; and a celebrated graduate seminar, taught in several, intersecting iterations, on the “Writing of Everyday Life.” Just as she prioritized collaboration as a writer, so she embraced it as a faculty member: she co-taught a course on literary collaboration with Daniel Benjamin, one on epistolary writing with Emily Thornbury, a combined lecture on modern literature and poetry workshop with Charles Altieri, and a seminar entitled “Creative Sentences” and a lecture on 21st century literature with Eric Falci. In addition to her regular teaching duties, Hejinian served on a large number of dissertation committees, regularly curated the Holloway Poetry series, took on numerous service assignments in the department and across campus, and regularly oversaw independent studies and creative writing theses and dissertations. She also started the department’s “Women in Intellectual Life” series, an important series of conversations among faculty members and graduate students, which ran from 2013 to 2018. In 2016, she hosted and was the lead organizer of a major conference on contemporary Australian poetry, which brought more than two dozen Australian and Australian Aboriginal poets to the English department. In 2009, Hejinian was chosen to deliver the Charles Mills Gayley lecture, which is the highest honor that the English department faculty bestows upon its members. In 2015, in recognition of her towering achievements and consummate dedication to Berkeley students and the department, Hejinian was named the John F. Hotchkis Chair in English, a position that she held until her retirement in June 2020.
Hejinian is survived by her two children, Paull and Anna; her four grandchildren, Marka, Amity, Finn, and Diego; her brother, Douglas Hall; her sister, Marie Katrak; and her husband, Larry Ochs.
Beloved and admired by students and colleagues, Lyn’s presence in the Berkeley English department was transformative. We will miss her greatly.
For the recently published New York Times obituary please see: "Lyn Hejinian, 82, Dies; Leading Light of the Language Poetry Movement."
Books by Lyn Hejinian
Fall Creek (forthcoming, Litmus Press)
The Proposition: Uncollected Early Poems, 1963-1983 (forthcoming, Edinburgh University Press)
Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday (Wesleyan University Press, 2023)
Hearing, with Leslie Scalapino (Litmus Press, 2021)
Tribunal (University of Chicago Press, 2019)
Positions of the Sun (Belladonna, 2018)
The Unfollowing (Omnidawn, 2016)
My Life and My Life in the Nineties (Wesleyan University Press, 2013)
A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982-1998, ed. with Barrett Watten (Wesleyan University Press, 2013)
The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn, 2012)
The Wide Road, with Carla Harryman (Belladonna, 2011)
The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, with Rae Armantrout, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten (Mode A/This Press, 10 volumes, 2006-2010)
Saga / Circus (Omnidawn, 2008)
Situations, Sings, with Jack Collom (Adventures in Poetry, 2008)
The Lake (with Emilie Clark; Granary Books, 2004)
My Life in the Nineties (Shark Books, 2003)
The Fatalist (Omnidawn Books, 2003)
On Laughter: A Melodrama, with Jack Collom (Baksun, 2003)
Slowly (Tuumba Press, 2002)
A Border Comedy (Granary Books, 2001)
The Beginner (Spectacular Books, 2000; Tuumba Press, 2002)
Happily (Post-Apollo Press, 2000)
Chartings, with Ray di Palma (Chax, 2000)
Sunflower, with Jack Collom (The Figures, 2000)
The Language of Inquiry (University of California Press, 2000)
Sight, with Leslie Scalapino (Edge Books, 1999)
The Traveler and the Hill, and the Hill, with Emilie Clark (Granary Books, 1998)
Wicker: A Poem, with Jack Collom (Rodent Press, 1996)
The Cold of Poetry (Sun & Moon Press, 1994)
Xenia, translation of poems by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (Sun & Moon Press, 1994)
The Cell (Sun & Moon Press, 1992)
Oxota: A Short Russian Novel (The Figures, 1991; Wesleyan University Press, 2019)
Leningrad, with Michael Davidson, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten (Mercury House, 1991)
Description, translations of poems by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (Sun & Moon Press, 1990)
Individuals, with Kit Robinson (Chax, 1988)
My Life (revised version, Sun & Moon Press, 1987; Green Integer, 2002)
The Guard (Tuumba Press, 1984)
Redo (Salt-Works Press, 1984)
My Life (Burning Deck, 1980)
Writing Is an Aid to Memory (The Figures, 1978)
Gesualdo (Tuumba Press, 1978)
A Mask of Motion (Burning Deck, 1977)
A Thought is the Bride of What Thinking (Tuumba Press, 1976)
a gRReat adventure (1972)
Courses taught by Lyn Hejinian at UC Berkeley (Fall 2001 - Fall 2019)
Undergraduate Workshops and Seminars
Recent and Contemporary Poetics and Practices – Fall 2002
Recent Innovations in American Poetry – Fall 2003
American Objectivist Poets, 1928-1980 – Fall 2004
Poetry Writing Workshop – Fall 2001, Fall 2003, Fall 2005, Fall 2008, Fall 2012
The Harlem Renaissance – Fall 2007
The Writings of Gertrude Stein – Fall 2010
The Rejection of Closure: Slow Readings – Fall 2011, Fall 2014
Slow Reading / Slow Seeing – Fall 2016
The Art of Writing: Collaboration, with Daniel Benjamin – Fall 2017
Creative Sentences, with Eric Falci – Fall 2019
Undergraduate Lectures
Literature in English, Mid-19th through the 20th Century – Fall 2003, Fall 2006, Fall 2007, Fall 2009
Epistles: The Letter in Life and Literature, with Emily Thornbury – Fall 2015
Contemporary 21st-Century American Writing – Fall 2016 and Fall 2019 (with Eric Falci)
Graduate Workshops and Seminars
The Writings of Gertrude Stein – Fall 2001
The Contemporary Long Poem – Spring 2005 and Fall 2005
Poetry Writing Workshop – Fall 2002, Fall 2006, Fall 2011, Fall 2017
The Turn to Language and the Writing of Everyday Life – Fall 2008
The Writing of Everyday Life – Fall 2010
Allegories of Late Capitalism and the Writing of Everyday Life – Fall 2014
Allegorical Moments: Public, Private, and the Writing of Everyday Life – Fall 2018