Mi vida en los noventa

by Lyn Hejinian

Poetry. The continuation of the project begun in Hejinian's best-selling MY LIFE also available from SPD MY LIFE IN THE NINETIES provides important glimpses into related works such as HAPPILY, THE BEGINNER, and SLOWLY. Part prose poetry, part autobiography, and part radical modernist experiment, MY LIFE IN THE NINETIES is a masterpiece of recent writing on identity, language, and politics."

Genres: Poetry, Biography Memoir

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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

[Larsen Puch]

Son diez poemas escritos en prosa donde la autora yuxtapone frases que representan cada año de esa década. Hay reflexiones, referencias a sus lecturas y bagaje cultural, además de hechos autobiográficos y sucesos históricos que gatillan pensamientos, opiniones, intuiciones. Puede considerarse una segunda parte del poemario Mi vida, que publicó cuando tenía 37 años. Ese poemario contenía 37 poemas de 37 oraciones cada uno. Cuando cumplió 45 años lo reeditó, agregando 8 poemas más y 8 oraciones a cada uno de los poemas, bajo la misma premisa que la publicación original. En EEUU se suele publicar Mi vida y Mi vida en los noventa en un solo libro. Son poemas que dialogan con la propia existencia y el devenir sociopolítico, desde una mirada crítica y creativa.

[Pablo López Astudillo]

nada qué decir

[Samy Sanzana]

Poemario GOD, el viaje que realiza Hejinian es único e indescriptible.

[Joseph Joyce]

Returned to read the continuation of my life, more of the same and I loved it just as much, maybe more. This book is nice when I let it flow over me. Hejinian seems to conclude that an autobiography can never tell the truth of a life, but that doesn’t mean words might still manage to do something —Each sentence is a window into a life, even though it doesn’t ever explain it. It’s so rhythmically written that it flows over like music and occasionally gives a feeling of insight that slips away again, almost like when you wake up from a dream where you were sure you learnt something, but don’t remember what.

[Yonina]

It wants to delight me and it slowly gets comfortable adapting the earlier styles of My Life (edition 1 and the updated edition 2) into something new, something not quite as unsettling but still more meditative. Perfect too for my ongoing thesis about Hejinian's work and discursivity, syntax, and (non)sense.