November 10th Blog Effort

This weeks readings took us deep into the mystifying territory of the language poets. These poets are not interested in using language to represent something real, but rather look at language as a living, functioning world. One of the most fascinating language poets, Lyn Hejinian, writes that “language is an order of reality itself and not a mere mediating medium.” Hejinian prefers to play with the reader’s desire to find meaning by writing in a style which at first looks like a narrative but which actually frustrates the effort to take away a simple reading. This technique defamiliarizes the reader right at the point where things should start to make sense. The poems take on a life of their own and begin to talk about their process of creating meaning on the meta-narrative level. In “My Life,” for example, Hejinian asks, “Were we seeing a pattern or merely an appearance of small white sailboats on the bay,” and “Why would anyone find astrology interesting when it is possible to learn about astronomy.” These statements question the processes in which people look for the meaning behind things rather than looking at the thing itself. People who look at the stars or sailboats and search for the meaning behind these occurrences miss out on the beauty of the actual objects. For Hejinian language is the same: the beauty is to be found in the sounds of the words themselves and in the way they relate to one another. Although the poem is entitled “My Life” Hejinian does not privilege herself within her text. The German button inventor and aging magician are brought up with no correlation made to the narrative about her life. As the poem itself states, she follows “the progress of ideas” in a process “full of surprises and unexpected correlations.” Hejinian’s seemingly random process refuses to give any idea more weight than another and can be seen as disrupting the hierarchy than defines most endeavors in language.
Language poets are also interested in breaking the forth wall and catching the reader looking, which further disrupts the way meaning is usually created. The reader would often like to imagine that the writer is the one crating the meaning and the reader is a passively taking it all in. Hejinian disrupts this relationship by addressing the reader directly, as in such passages as, “Are you fingers in the margin.” By addressing the role the reader plays, even by simply holding the text, Hejinian brings the reader into the equation and forces him or her to think about how meaning is being created. Although Hejinian has written the poem the reader is the one who is left to “assemble all of the relatives.” Hejinian shows that she is aware of this with another question: “Where is my honey running.” Both a play on the sounds words make and a question in the form of a statement, this quote perfectly sums up Hejinian’s ideas about how language functions and the way poetry can create meaning.