Lyn Hejinian in Berkeley. Photo by Jennifer Scappettone.
In the days after Lyn Hejinian’s passing, her students and friends reached out to each other, texted messages of disbelief and grief, and gathered in different ways, near and far, to read her work and to collectively express what Lyn means to us. This feature is itself such a gathering.
This portfolio brings together writing by Peruvian poet Roger Santiváñez’s beginning in the mid-1980s and into the early 1990s, or from his book Homenaje para iniciados to his 1991 book Symbol.
In a recording of a performance from Clemente Padín’s archives described by Jill Kuhnheim, Padín reads a poem to a group of schoolchildren until he reaches the line “‘este verso debe repetirse’ [this line should be repeated].” Taking his own words as instruction, Padín closes the gap between the text of the poem and its performance, repeating the words again and again until one of the children exclaims “‘este verso debe culminar’ [this line should finish].” Rather than an interruption of a prescripted performance, the playful, improvisatory response of the child perfectly completes Padín’s poem.
