Lyn Hejinian: Linkage and Unlinkage

This essay engages with Lyn Hejinian's contribution to Grand Piano 8 and Grand Piano 10. The first contribution includes comments on My Life and on her understanding of avant-garde practice more generally. She layers three periods: her Bay Area childhood of the 1950s; the Bay Area LANGUAGE writing scene of 1977-78, when she wrote the first version of My Life; and the Bay Area scene, eight years later, which was the context for the second version. The second contribution addresses political activism. The essay concludes with my memories of receiving a typescript of My Life from her in the late 1970s, my teaching of My Life, and my first meeting with her at a conference in 1994.