Wicker

by Lyn Hejinian, Jack Collom

Genres: Poetry

40 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

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

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took several experiments to decide how to read this. I have no idea how the collaboration was done, but it's written in two columns, the first column is a list of quotes, like marginalia, and the second column is made up of 5 line stanzas where the last line of one stanza is repeated in the next stanza but seems to be in the second line, pantoum-like?

I first tried to read all of the first column quotes then the second, but reading a series of quotes, then poetry felt like too much of a weird change. Reading the poem side then the quotes side, same thing, although I kept trying to do that. Also it seems like the quotes are related to the poetry stanza to the right of it, so I figured I better read them together, so best seems to be to read the block quote then the 5 line stanza to the right of it, but don't read one line of the quote and one line of the stanza, clearly.