My Life

by Lyn Hejinian

Recognized today as one of the great works of contemporary American literature, My Life is at once poetic autobiography, personal narrative, a woman's fiction, and an ongoing dialogue with the poet and her experience. Upon its first publication by Sun & Moon Press (the edition reprinted here) the publication Library Journal described the book as one that "is an intriguing journey that both illuminates and perplexes, teases and challenges, as it reveals an innovative artist at work."

Lyn Hejinian is the author of The Cell, The Cold of Poetry, Writing Is an Aid to Memory and A Border Comedy. She lives in Berkeley and teaches at the University of California.

Genres: Poetry, Memoir, Nonfiction, Literature, Feminism, Biography, Womens

115 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Lyn Hejinian (born May 17, 1941) is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life (Sun & Moon, 1987, original version Burning Deck, 1980), as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry (University of California Press, 2000).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent “poetic autobiography,” told in lyrical, repetitious, elliptical prose, slowly passing through a life with baffling clarity, bamboozling starkness and confuddling honesty. The chapter headings usually reappear embedded in the subsequent chapter text, hinting at mathematical structures or arrangements between chapters (or even sentences?). As a non-poet and rare poetry reader, I’m rarely impressed by this sort of high modernist plate-spinning trickery, unless it’s purely prose, but this book impresses by its emphasis on the word over the world (thanks Gass), which Hejinian’s bourgeois book-driven upbringing would have inculcated in her from the off. All that matters is what the artist committed. The rest are citations and footnotes.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite literary treats that I return to when I want perspective, when I want to be lifted out of the linear and escape into freewritten bliss. It feels like a stream-of-consciousness Woolfian-Kundera daydream.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

If reality is trying to express itself in words it is certainly taking the long way around.

In 1978 at age 37 Lyn Hejinian first built this autobiographical structure in 37 sections of 37 sentences, with each section running parallel to the specific year of her life. Eight years later Sun & Moon published a second edition for which Hejinian added 8 new sections and 8 new sentences to each previous section. Hejinian is primarily a poet and My Life reads like an extended work of prose poetry, for the focus here remains almost exclusively at sentence level, with word choice and juxtaposition being paramount. Amidst the presumed memory fragments and repeated anchor phrases, pithy statements rise from the text:

The fear of 'losing' ideas objectifies knowledge.

A person is a bit of space that has gotten itself in moments.

One begins as a student but becomes a friend of clouds.

At just over 100 pages one could call this a short book, and yet the density of Hejinian's prose defies that characterization. It's as if each sentence contains a story, many of which will remain mysteries due to their opacity. Still, even floundering as a reader in the waters of this text is pleasant, for the muscularity of Hejinian's sentences demand an attentive audience and one can certainly still marvel without a requirement of full comprehension.

[Michael Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

once i was photocopying this for a class, but there was a sheet of labels in the machine, so i had a page of labels with text from my life - i put them on my current exercise book for writing poems, which i took to the us in 2004. i hardly wrote any good poems tho - & i was sick! but i had a dream run of meeting people, including lyn.

unf i seem to have lost my copy of this book

[Andrew]

I'm really, really torn on this. I felt like Lyn Hejinian got so close to something great. But poetic memoirs of childhood have been done so, so much better by people like Walter Benjamin and Nathalie Sarraute, and by aiming for the rubric of “poetry” rather than memoir, this means I'm going to be VERY persnickety about language (and not, for example, allow all caps, eep). The language wasn't bad, but I'm not so sure why other reviewers here are cumming in their athleisure wear about it. As far as the general narrative, which forms a big, big part of My Life, it's hard why I should care in particular about this one upper middle class kid with a pony.

[David Kuhnlein · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I smell the smell of adhesive tape, of wounds. Language which is like fruitskin around fruit."
— Lyn Hejinian, My Life

Lyn Hejinian (1941-2024) published this edition of My Life at age forty-five. The book’s forty-five sections are built of forty-five sentences apiece, a rove of delicate prose poems each corresponding to a year of her life. The floating, italicized headers and the riffs on several oft-repeated phrases resemble memory on the page. Sentences morph and twirl, language as playful as a dance, changing meaning through the years. Every instance of “a pause, a rose, something on paper” (the opening, and perhaps the most repeated, line) appears renewed in every iteration, surrounded by different sentences and within a new context. Gertrude Stein said that repetition doesn’t exist, only insistence, an idea that drives this poetic biography.

The text is an appendage of the instinct that shaped it. Hejinian writes, “To some extent, each sentence has to be the whole story.” A beautiful way to get the reader thinking about the relationship between language and fragments, the way that a particular phrase can act like a black hole in a poem, engulfing everything that surrounds it. And I wonder if, for Hejinian, these poems reinvigorated the life felt in those years or if, instead, “we have come a long way from what we actually felt.”

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

"it seemed we had hardly begun and we were already there"

a wonderful autobiography in the form of a prose-poem. like nabokov's autobiography, it is as much concerned with the nature of memory itself as with the story of the writer's life. apparently there are 2 editions of this work, the first written at age 37 in 37 segments of 37 sentences each (this is the edition i got my hands on) and a second edition rewritten at age 45 with 45 segments of 45 sentences each. this expansion suggests that this is probably an ongoing life-project and i would love so much to read it if it gets up to, say, 74. hejinian is often associated with the language poets but this work is much more accessible than anything i've read in that genre. recommended!

[Holly Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Hejinian but this book is hampered by a comfortable middle-class sense of continuity that ughhh arghh I can't even finish it, she HAD HORSES, SHE HAD HORSES. If you're tacky enough to have had a happy childhood, leave it out of your books. I can't believe this predates 'The Guard.' Don't give your children horses.

[Celine Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hesitate to say “revelatory” because it’s such an overused term—but it did actually feel revelatory to see how Hejinian’s prose-like poems slowly unfold over the years of her life, with phrases repeating from poem to poem and providing a sense of gentle, elliptical continuity. Some very lovely and strange and wonderful sentences, and a nicely oblique narrative thrust.

Read this very slowly (on and off for over a year, forgetting it for months at a time and then devouring ten to thirty pages in a sitting), which felt right. She’s using language in such strange and fascinating ways that it’s hard to really inhale this book and go fast.

[Pablo López Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impresionante. Sorprendente. Jamás había leído algo así. Lyn construye un cementerio con extrema pulcritud, siendo meticulosa al punto de que en cualquier momento te pierdes.
Contundente sí muy contundente, lo hice lento y cuando vuelva lo leeré aún más lento. Se merece todo nuestro tiempo

[Caro Mouat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me quedo con dos frases de mis talleristas:
1. Hay que leerlo como si uno fuera niña (dejarse llevar por la experiencia sensorial y rítmica del libro).
2. Es un libro que tendré por siempre en mi velador y al que volveré una y otra vez por años.

[Steve Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful autobiographical prose-poem, and, like any life, a continuous work in progress and revision. The original book, written when Hejinian was 37 years old, contains 37 chapters of 37 sentences each. The revised edition (which I read) was written when she was 45, and contains 45 chapters of 45 sentences each. So not only are there 8 new chapters, but there are also 8 new sentences added within each of the original 37 chapters. A wonderful way to depict the way life expands forward and backward at the same time, and written with luminously evocative wordcraft.

Such a lovely and odd book. I love the representations of revisionary memory and the idea of life as a continual work in progress. A favorite.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you don't like postmodernism, you'll be annoyed. if you do like postmodernism, you'll fall in love.

this little, litte, little book is amazing, but it is not for the faint of heart or mind.

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Only fragments are accurate."

Like a stereoscope of images upon images, creating scenes strange with dissonance, or scenes at ease with coming home.

What else could I possibly say?

[Sam Oxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very difficult book to write about, made only harder by my lack of poetry reading over the past few years. I like the way this book, in smashing so many disparate thoughts together, exploits pattern recognition impulses. You start track the 12-15 repeated phrases, when the title of one poem shows up as a line in another. The mundanity of it all is really cool and inspiring for me.

[Emilia Pequeño · Rating 5 out of 5]

quiero más

[Francisca · Rating 5 out of 5]

second five-star read of the year so far. and it is another poetry collection. which you would be excused from not guessing at seeing the title. my life sounds pretty memoir-like after all. although, poetry collection doesn't quite do the trick either. the best possible definition i can consider is for this to be a poetic recollection. or recollections. in the same way, virginia woolf's The Waves doesn't quite fit in with the notion of a novel yet it can't be a poem strictly speaking either, lyn hejinian's life story defies proper conventions as well.

written in her 37th birthday, the book consists of 37 parts, each made of 37 sentences. if you think i figured out the amount of sentences while reading it, you're giving me way too much credit. it was pretty visible each part had the same length (two pages tops each) but the amount of careful work into making the same amount of sentences all around was beyond me. based on that idea and dedication, this could have been another memoir into the big pile of poetical texts. however, lyn hejinian belongs to the so-called language poets which means things aren't as easy as they look.

in fact, things are meant to appear the complete opposite. for language poets, the reader's role was essential to the co-construction of a poem's meaning. think reader-response theories if your mind is plagued with literary theory like mine is. if it isn't, let me give you an example:

take symmetry. red mother, red father, many red and rosy children, most of them women of stability. that word.

now, try to make sense of those three sentences put together. you can blame me for taking them out of context but you can also trust me that this isn't about context. it's about what you build-up inside your own head based on the written stimulus provided by the author. as you can imagine, language poets are a controversial sort. after all, it must be quite difficult to determine a group of poetry that actively declares to be indescribable. take another (yet clearer) example from the book:

i have said, and meant, that i want people to "get" this, and yet, with expansive sensations, i hate to "lighten up".

basically, i could make this much straight-forward for you to understand my point. but what would be the fun of that?

which was what this book set out to do. it wants you to know the author's life. it tells it to you throughout 37 mini-chapters. her life is all in there; it just won't give you the clues to figure out. it's a challenge, i'll say--and perhaps, in the end, you might feel like you didn't get the full picture. maybe you weren't meant to to begin with. maybe you need to read it again. and again. or maybe, you take away with you all your first impressions and consider the text itself reveals more of the author's life than its actual anecdotal content. who's to say? the author will certainly not tell you.

[Bea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderful choice of words, high musicality and great use of poetry. The format though is beyond my understanding and the “storytelling” unnervingly cryptic. Oh well, à chacun son goût!

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most stunning piece of LANGUAGE poetry I've ever read.
The incredibly dense ideas about the fabrications of words and the fabrications of identity are made all the more profound through parataxis and repetition.
I honestly spent hours highlighting and breaking this poem apart. It's a genuine work of art. Hopefully she releases a third edition of the poem.

I honestly think that people who dislike this book really don't understand the context of LANGUAGE poetry or what the whole genius point of this "autobiography" is. So if I can say anything to anyone before they decide to pick up this poem, do a little research first.

[Michael Lindgren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's difficult to make an evaluation of this book. Perhaps the way to approach it, at least right now, is through a simple list of pros and cons:

PRO:
• Unique
• Evocative
• Poetically charged
• Unsettling

CON:
• Impenetrable
• Self-absorbed
• Willfully opaque
• Nonsensical

Cf. review of Susan Wheeler, Assorted Poems. Both are overtly "poetic" documents that force the reader to make judgments regarding the value of highly associative / subjective verse.

[Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people, in my experience, will come up against this book (because you don't merely read it--you come up against it) and say that they find it impenetrable or heavy-handed. For me, it is exciting and intriguing and the perfect overlapping of prose poem and autobiography.

For those who crave linear narrative, you can definitely find it here if you want it. For dorks like me who love to wrestle with literature and walk away a little bit frustrated, this is a brilliant work.

[Canova · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read this book for a poetry class; at first it struck me as nonsensical and too unique for its own good. However, I must say that this is a book that will stay with me forever. I can keep reading it over and over, each time with a different reading. This is a text that is "open" in the sense that it acknowledges so much more than the words with which it is written. A beautiful and poetic exploration of self, memory, process, and language...

[Jessey Nickells · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly unique autobiography in which each sentence stands as its own poem without detracting from the book as a whole. I could read this book once a year and love it for something new each time.

[Kate Savage · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry, but when I wasn't confused I was a little bored. I liked her last 8 sections best, written 8 years after the original work, which contained a little more narrative.

[Matt Dowdy]

“I remember my fear of personality, which was so similar to the fear of forgetting that the tiniest idea became a “nagging thought,” until I could write it down and out, preserved, but, in a sense, too, eliminated.”

An elliptical, revealing book, not like anything else I’ve read. Like experiencing time.

“I laugh as if my pots were clean.”

[sqrt2]

I’m not smart enough to understand what I read

[Samantha M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique way of storytelling/(auto)biography. Open text prose is a choose-your-own-adventure form of verse, which could be prescient for a post-democracy America. Suggestive to grab readers' attention, drawing on their personal memories and experiences, adding to the bigger story.

[Bianca Scarlat · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first poetic biography
Lovely lines, relatable and queer and an incredible book
I may buy it someday kinda feel bad having to return it back to the library

[Sarah Miller]

Read for class. REALLY struggled with this one, but it’s probably just not my thing.

[Bunnyhoopla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the sheer imagistic and synesthetic beauty of the first sentence,

"A moment yellow, just as four years later, when my father returned home from the war, the moment of greeting him, as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, younger, thinner than when he had left, was purple--though moments are no longer so colored."