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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
2.75/5
rating is raised slightly because for some reason I could follow what was being written at times and because of the lines that were great gems. otherwise, I struggled and was confused and tired while reading it.
rating is raised slightly because for some reason I could follow what was being written at times and because of the lines that were great gems. otherwise, I struggled and was confused and tired while reading it.
i always forgot to log things i read for school. read this for my poetry thesis workshop. it was very good but i hold some resentment due to having given the worst presentation i ever have in my life on this book. not the book's fault tho. but i will have to reread it when i am distanced from the trauma...
Like, 4.5 only because it took me a little bit to get into it, but the trick was to just keep reading. Felt a lot at first like the first chapter of Portrait of an Artist as a young man, but as I kept reading, the way the fragmented/fractioned (two different things--) repetitions played off of each other made it feel like its own special thing.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
It's rare for me to rate a title this low, but I really don't want anyone who loves discovery in poetry to try this. This is my second read through Hejinian's quasi-memoir prose poem reveries. It was first assigned to me in college, and I believed later that I just wasn't ready for it, so I've tried it again, a few decades later. No better.
Why? Because as often as Hejinian is able to find an occasional insightful juxtaposition, a beautiful moment or phrase, these nuggets are rare, far too rare and buried in what seems otherwise a stream-of-consciousness pile of words struggling to be both sentimental and simultaneously profound.
To a degree, all poets do this. We search for images, try out ideas, scribe our memories, wonder why they lodge in our minds as they do. But then, oh the vital and critical then, we sort and re-frame, consider what is merit-able what is dross, we revise and seek the opinions of others. "The obvious analogy is to music." And as often as that little nugget is inexplicably and unsearchingly repeated, I couldn't help but find such "techniques" as gimmicks, not threads for unity of theme or idea.
Yes, I truly value the freedom of writers to explore what they wish as they wish. We should. But just as valuable is the time of the reader considering which book to invest time in; and this is not it.
Why? Because as often as Hejinian is able to find an occasional insightful juxtaposition, a beautiful moment or phrase, these nuggets are rare, far too rare and buried in what seems otherwise a stream-of-consciousness pile of words struggling to be both sentimental and simultaneously profound.
To a degree, all poets do this. We search for images, try out ideas, scribe our memories, wonder why they lodge in our minds as they do. But then, oh the vital and critical then, we sort and re-frame, consider what is merit-able what is dross, we revise and seek the opinions of others. "The obvious analogy is to music." And as often as that little nugget is inexplicably and unsearchingly repeated, I couldn't help but find such "techniques" as gimmicks, not threads for unity of theme or idea.
Yes, I truly value the freedom of writers to explore what they wish as they wish. We should. But just as valuable is the time of the reader considering which book to invest time in; and this is not it.
A unique way of storytelling/(auto)biography. Open text prose is a choose-your-own-adventure form of verse, which could be prescient for a post-democracy America. Suggestive to grab readers' attention, drawing on their personal memories and experiences, adding to the bigger story.
We read this book for a hybrid forms writing class -- well, an excerpt, and I grabbed the whole thing. At first I found it hard to get into, then I described it as learning to swim (especially for a poor swimmer like myself) -- struggling and thrashing about as I read, then beginning to understand what this "water" thing is about, and eventually floating, noticing all that was around me. I found myself observing certain lines and watching others drift by, keeping an eye out for the sections where Hejinian repeats herself again and again, drawing together threads for the reader to catch, themes that recur through a life. The "My Life in the Nineties" update was interesting as well, particularly how she alters the form somewhat for the time.
A stable characteristic of books assigned for class is one can rest assured someone in the rest of the deskbound pack felt a lot more strongly one way or another about the work within as similar a context as one can get without flinging the work at roommate friends or familial relations, so I can go ahead and amass my participation grade in public and not care very much at all in private. Language poets! Feminism! Wannabe Barnes' and Loy's with a fetish for the "mad" and more skill with temporal dimensions than engaging literary experimentation. Maybe there's a compatriot of Hejinian who would have appealed more to my fancies, but I'm content to trip over them by chance later.
The name of the game is this triple aged year by sentence by part work in which youth is implied, knowledge is thrustm and the only nod to passage of time in one home city Oakland California United States is a father leaving with a cane and a daughter returning with Mace. Cute, right? Nah. It would've been more forgiveable had the references and the insights accumulated into something more profound than a haphazard tonal scale whose rhythms did more to exasperate than to swoop and grip and soar, but that's personal preference for you. I'm most certainly missing everything and then some, but when one's actually read Proust and Woolf and Walcott and Bâ and something despite all the encrusted gore of excited spittle and pontificating prats actually clicks, the second guessing's an exercise in waste. She doesn't have as many ratings as those others? Let me show you my library who is in the same way in addition to lacking a canonical position at Berkeley. Throwing a woebegone affirmative action composite and expecting me to play critical fetch is a shitty way to go.
The one good thing about this work is the escalation of anticipation for next-in-the-assigned-reading-lineup [b:Dictee|90894|Dictee|Theresa Hak Kyung Cha|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1171224795s/90894.jpg|1397562]. Now that I'm foaming at the mouth for.
PS: Waking up to news of [a:Svetlana Alexievich|7728207|Svetlana Alexievich|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1395670702p2/7728207.jpg] winning the 2015 Nobel Prize for Lit was one of the best things ever. [b:Voices from Chernobyl|357486|Voices from Chernobyl The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster|Svetlana Alexievich|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316637138s/357486.jpg|1103107], here I come.
The name of the game is this triple aged year by sentence by part work in which youth is implied, knowledge is thrustm and the only nod to passage of time in one home city Oakland California United States is a father leaving with a cane and a daughter returning with Mace. Cute, right? Nah. It would've been more forgiveable had the references and the insights accumulated into something more profound than a haphazard tonal scale whose rhythms did more to exasperate than to swoop and grip and soar, but that's personal preference for you. I'm most certainly missing everything and then some, but when one's actually read Proust and Woolf and Walcott and Bâ and something despite all the encrusted gore of excited spittle and pontificating prats actually clicks, the second guessing's an exercise in waste. She doesn't have as many ratings as those others? Let me show you my library who is in the same way in addition to lacking a canonical position at Berkeley. Throwing a woebegone affirmative action composite and expecting me to play critical fetch is a shitty way to go.
The one good thing about this work is the escalation of anticipation for next-in-the-assigned-reading-lineup [b:Dictee|90894|Dictee|Theresa Hak Kyung Cha|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1171224795s/90894.jpg|1397562]. Now that I'm foaming at the mouth for.
PS: Waking up to news of [a:Svetlana Alexievich|7728207|Svetlana Alexievich|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1395670702p2/7728207.jpg] winning the 2015 Nobel Prize for Lit was one of the best things ever. [b:Voices from Chernobyl|357486|Voices from Chernobyl The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster|Svetlana Alexievich|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316637138s/357486.jpg|1103107], here I come.
I’m sorry, I know this is supposed to be like a literary masterpiece but this book just didn’t do it for me. I was confused and disinterested throughout the entire thing and had to force myself through it. I have recently taken several classes about memoir and prose poetry and My Life was mentioned and appeared on most of those courses’ suggested reading lists. I was so excited to dive into it! Perhaps I am just not the right reader for this book, but it felt completely unapproachable for me outside of a classroom setting. I think it would lend itself well to academics who want to parse through line by line and study the sentence structure and the cyclical repetition of certain phrases. But as an enjoyable read on a cold, rainy night? It’s a no from me.
On the surface is as nonsensical as it is beautiful. The real treasure is in between the lines — here are some of my favorite quotes:
“The entomologist, as she herself says, can tell you everything she knows about ants but nothing as to what ants know about themselves.”
“Some are crystal, some have membranes, but moments are bubbles drifting up, many go up at once.”
“I am a stranger to the little girl I was, and more - more strange. But many facts about a life should be left out, they are easily replaced.”
“Thinking back to my childhood, I remember others more clearly than myself, but when I think of more recent times, I begin to dominate my memories. I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time.”
Not rating because I’m not sure how to quantify this one
“The entomologist, as she herself says, can tell you everything she knows about ants but nothing as to what ants know about themselves.”
“Some are crystal, some have membranes, but moments are bubbles drifting up, many go up at once.”
“I am a stranger to the little girl I was, and more - more strange. But many facts about a life should be left out, they are easily replaced.”
“Thinking back to my childhood, I remember others more clearly than myself, but when I think of more recent times, I begin to dominate my memories. I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time.”
Not rating because I’m not sure how to quantify this one
Absolutely brilliant. This is maybe my favorite book ever.