"A total gushing fangirl"

I dragged Adam to the "New Reading Series at 21 Grand," which steps into the void left by the ending of New Yipes ("old" yipes?). It was a chance to see Lyn Hejinian read (and also K. Silem Mohammed).

Lyn Hejinian is the reason I became a poet. OK, not quite true. I was a poet before I read Hejinian. However, she is the reason I became the poet that I am. Her book My Life changed my life when I encountered it at 18 in my first year at Mills College. (I suppose grudging thanks are owed to Stephen Ratcliffe.)

I'm not even equipped to review the reading last night. As I told Brandon Brown (new curator of the "new" reading series), I'm a total gushing fangirl when it comes to Hejinian. I was just relieved to see her feet were not made of clay (or rather, aren't we all, but it didn't matter). There is something appealing and girlish about her in person, which may be reflected in the playfulness of her writing. She read from her new work, and of course it's the sort of poetry that washes over you at the time, with only snippets and snatches making any impression, and leaves you with a strong feeling of wanting to re-encounter it, slowly, on paper, with a cup of coffee and a long afternoon (or maybe a late evening, she said these are "night poems").

I bought a copy of the book she had on sale at the reading (not the one she read from, which is as yet unpublished and tentatively titled The Book of a Thousand Eyes). I'm looking forward to spending some time with Situations, Sings, a collaboration with Jack Collom.