Articles

In The Language of Inquiry, we can see Lyn Hejinian writing herself into new discoveries, new disclosures. In “La Faustienne” (1994-1998), Hejinian revisits her earlier interest “in Enlightenment science and the epistemological questions it raises” that she had written about in “Strangeness” (1988). But six years later, “I found myself at an impasse, realizing those quandaries had become politicized in my mind.”^[1]

Anyone who has ever set type by hand knows it is a labor of love. Meticulously assembling slivers of lead to spell words, lines, and pages for an imagined book is not for the faint-hearted or stumble-fingered. It takes patience and pleasure in miniature physical intricacy, driven by desire to send writing into the world in practical, handsome packages.

In Mary Ruefle’s “Short Lecture on the Dead,” Ruefle makes an audacious claim about poets and their relation to life and death: “THE MINUTE [POETS] BECOME DEAD THEY CAN TEACH US EVERYTHING ... the minute they are dead all their poems about death become poems about being alive.”^[1] I take this maxim to be true, however with the caveat that there is a caliber of poet who writes as if they have never lived. Ruefle herself is among them for me, as is Lyn Hejinian.

Lyn Hejinian was a dear friend of many years. We met in the late 1970s. I admired her poetry and her dedication to motherhood. She was always very supportive of my artwork and of both of my children. When my daughter Emma Bee Bernstein died unexpectedly in 2008 at the age of 23 years old, Lyn wrote this wonderful poem, which I love, “The Eye of the Storm.” Lyn came to Brooklyn to read the poem at a memorial for Emma that took place at my A.I.R. Gallery show, “Eye of the Storm: New Paintings” in February 2009. The poem is dedicated to me and is in of honor of Emma.