Tribunal

by Lyn Hejinian

The three works of poetry that constitute Tribunal were written in the current context of seemingly ubiquitous warfare and the specter of unabashed neo-fascism, ethno-nationalism, and—especially in the United States—reassertions of white supremacy. As renowned poet Lyn Hejinian recounts, the inspiration for Tribunal gradually took shape over the course of almost a decade in the collaborative work she has done to fight neoliberal policies that dismantle the public sphere through actions that include privatizing the commons, busting unions, and imposing a corporate, profiteering model on a range of institutions including public higher education. Hejinian explores a broad range of responses to our deeply troubling historical period in Tribunal’s three collections. These poems express an emotional scope that includes fury, sadness, and even, at times, something very close to pity for our humanity, perpetually unable to avoid its own penchant for cruelty. Hejinian is the rare poet who can bring to the page a rich, complex rendering of how mutually exclusive emotions can exist simultaneously. We lose safety and surety, but we gain a wider lens on contemporary crises from her sometimes lacerating, sometimes intensely beautiful lyric verse. It’s only in such an artistic and emotional landscape that readers, thinkers, artists, workers, and all comrades against injustice can manage to keep inventing, imagining, and hoping. Throughout these crises, the poet returns to language as a meaningful space in which to grapple with a seemingly endless cycle of conflict. While the works can be read as expressions of protest or dissent, they powerfully convey an argument for artmaking itself—and a turn to its affirmation of life.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2019

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

[Ebony Earwig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teems with its own kind of energy. Definitely going to check out more of Lyn's books at some point.

[Susanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freaking fantastic book. Incredibly dense and juicy, with humor and pathos and terror about our current situation.

[Mandy E · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fine sustaining anger

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tyranny in the time of Trump was a dangerously loaded subject. Not dangerous like it was a loaded gun. Dangerous more like a toy boat, and the risk is you try very hard to treat it like a warship. But it’s not. Which, for me, was the difficult part of that man’s Presidency. He was awful, and he kept pretending like that part of him shouldn’t be taken seriously. Which itself was absurd. And under cover of these "absurdities," his administration would do such serious damage to everyone in this country. Hejinian’s long poem, “Time of Tyranny” occupies this time, the unusual angles that distorted life and sensibility, referring the reader to a sentimentality that was like an exposed nerve. They were strange times to occupy. Everyone felt strangeness inside them. And aggravation. And it was a loop between them. Whatever our collective acceptance was (as concession or circular logic), that was the general affect.

Hejinian’s poem occupies geography, landscapes, insularity, all of it forming the subject who is too aware of a world perspective. I was recently reading Kelly Hoffer’s review of a Cody-Rose Clevidence book, and where Hoffer describes the book’s queer and curving language that suits desire and sexuality, she describes a method of language that feels present in Hejinian. As Clevidence is to desire and sexuality Hejinian is to tyranny. Meaning both poets are like mechanics of language, more closely suiting it to the subject’s perspective.

This makes for some very interesting moments in the book. But there are too many moments where Hejinian relies on a series of verbs, or adverbs, sometimes nouns. And that paratactic impulse doesn’t feel as lively or as compelling. For instance, the impulse to catalogue from the perspective of someone who’s immigrated to Mars invests too heavily in the color red. And I can see Hejinian’s impulse to be problematic about language in a place that has no language. And there is assuredly an ecopoetic (especially in the ways colonizing create ecopoetic issues) statement being made, where humans will bring their life to a landscape that was never designed for humans. But Hejinian’s impulse to sum it all in red doesn’t engender the interesting angle. The gesture to accumulate through too much intention makes the obscurity feel too planned.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

'I am a human of Martian origin straining to overween and overhear and understand and undergo and survive and surround and surrender to no one and then to everyone, that, a mere fiction: sheer universality, post-terrestrial, pre-alluvial, de facto, anomalous.'

(p17, from A Human of Mars)

**

'Pity combatants on the line who self-concretize, becoming paving stones
but I say too loudly that of which I don’t know how to say enough
borrowing transcription from a local pebble held in a palm
from which a puppet tugs as if pulled by the revolution of the planets
Mercury Saturn or Mars over nearly twelve and a half million days
marking time, which is the subject matter of history
in which the sun itself bakes the bread then drawn from the oven
and cooling under the proprietary nakedness of the caustic trees.
So, asked a bee of experience, how is it that umbrellas are raised
against the future of the sun? Remnants of the past
don’t expect us, remnants of the past didn’t foretell us.
Our songs are sonically shattered over shortwave by a scop
singing the praises of his patron, the racist acquitted—he nods
and mongers the derelict pattern, a never vanishing world.'

(p37, from Time of Tyranny)

**

'A work of art incurs a debt, owed to history and the times that carry it; the artist can never pay it, but, presumably, assumes that others will do so, or at least could.'

(p72, from Ring Burial)

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so sad to read of the author's passing earlier this year. I took a class with her at UC Berkeley, and it was unforgettably wonderful. She was such a generous teacher, I'll always be grateful for the gift of meeting her and learning from her.

Fortunately, she left us a lot of books to read, and so I was happy to come across this one. I've just read it once, and I'll read it again before it goes back to the library. I find that I enjoy re-reading the books of hers that I own, so I may well end up wanting to buy a copy of this one, too.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy a playful attitude toward language. As Gertrude Stein said of her own work, "if you read it and enjoy it, then you understand it."

[James Dennis Hoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the red desert of Mars to the occupied streets of Trump's America, Hejinian offers up three long yet riveting poems that, among other things, capture the alienation and despair of the decline of capitalism in the 21st century, the strangeness of being, of living in bodies, and the inescapable presence of language. Like Asbery, or even Whitman, Hejinian's long, flowing lines seem to incorporate and absorb almost everything she comes into contact with, the abstract thought as well as the concrete image, in a way that creates a whole much greater than any of its parts.

[error · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m sure when I say this and I mean it: sections of this book are some of the only pieces of art ive consumed that attempt to discuss our current political moment and actually succeed in capturing it. for those sections alone, tribunal was worth it for me.

I cannot express how little I expected to have that reaction when I started reading this after reading my life and slowly.

I respect lyn. I would never attempt to write like her and her work isn't the type of writing that I naturally gravitate to but I do think she's awesome.

[Renee Morales · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5, read for class

strongest and favorite of the 3 i’ve read. unafraid, funny, gloriously angry. very fun read.

“Being is a leaning note, becoming until absolutely everything has become.”

would recommend this one