Description
Hejinian's characteristic linguistic intensity and philosophical approach are present in this book-length poem.
"Reading Lyn Hejinian's HAPPILY can make one imagine a second, somewhat happier Stein telling stories in single long or short lines that are aware of one another as they go about their own affairs."—Bob Perelman
"HAPPILY"...is a series of aphoristic statements interrogating 'hap' or, more prosaically, one's lot in life, one's fortune. This notion of chance as it is expressed through its root form, as in to happen, happenstance, happenings, haphazard, happenchance, happily, and happy happiness, becomes the generator that enlivens this ontological exploration of language's relationship to experience."—Claudia Rankine
Poetry.
Author Bio
Lyn Hejinian is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of over twenty-five volumes of poetry and critical prose, including Positions of the Sun (Belladonna, 2019); Tribunal (Omnidawn Books, 2019); The Unfollowing (Omnidawn Books, 2016); A Border Comedy (Granary Books, 2001); Slowly (Tumba Press, 2002); The Beginner (Tumba Press, 2002); The Fatalist (Omnidawn, 2003), Saga/Circus (Omnidawn, 2008); The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn, 2012); and The Language of Inquiry (University of California Press, 2000). Her groundbreaking book of poetry, My Life, has had five reprintings from 1980-2002. With Barrett Watten, she is the co-editor of A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field 1982-1998, and the related Poetics Journal Digital Archive (Wesleyan University Press, 2013/2015). She is the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets, and the co-editor (with Jane Gregory and Claire Marie Stancek) of Nion Editions, a chapbook press. From 2001- 2020, Hejinian taught at the University of California, Berkeley; her scholarly work there and since is addressed principally to modernist, postmodern, and contemporary poetry and poetics, with a particular interest in avant-garde movements and the social practices they entail. In addition to her other academic work, she has long been involved in anti-privatization activism.
Author City: BERKELEY, CA USA