The Book of a Thousand Eyes

by Lyn Hejinian

Written over the course of two decades, The Book of a Thousand Eyes was begun as an homage to Scheherazade, the heroine of The Arabian Nights who, through her nightly tale-telling, saved her culture and her own life by teaching a powerful and murderous ruler to abandon cruelty in favor of wisdom and benevolence. Hejinian’s book is a compendium of “night works”―lullabies, bedtime stories, insomniac lyrics, nonsensical mumblings, fairy tales, attempts to understand at day’s end some of the day’s events, dream narratives, erotic or occasionally bawdy ditties, etc. The poems explore and play with languages of diverse stages of consciousness and realms of imagination. Though they may not be redemptive in effect, the diverse works that comprise The Book of a Thousand Eyes argue for the possibilities of a merry, pained, celebratory, mournful, stubborn commitment to life.

Genres: Poetry, American

344 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2012

About the author

Lyn Hejinian (born May 17, 1941) is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life (Sun & Moon, 1987, original version Burning Deck, 1980), as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry (University of California Press, 2000).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Keifer May · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book that made me waffle between a three and a four with my rating.

Clocking in at 331 pages, this book certainly felt bloated to me and I think there was some fat that could have been trimmed (or done more concisely). However, when Hejinian hits the right notes, your hair stands up and you feel it in your veins.

Some of these pieces do such a great job at capturing the space and mind of twilight and sleep. She gives us gibberish or blends languages. She gives surreal torrents of images. She switches voices. She uses her line breaks to perfection. She takes a philosophical problem, finds a cheeky way to talk about it, and simultaneously performs the problem that she gestures at (the problem with the dichotomy between mental objects and physical ones).

All that beauty and drive, but some of these felt phoned in to me. Perhaps it was my own failing to read deeply enough to grasp it. But I didn't love the entirety of this book.

[Wesley]

Read over a long, erratic period of time, because the collection was so long!

[Kelly Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Experience, dream, meaning, story, gaps and interlacings among them all. I look forward to revisiting this book repeatedly: "no good book tells the same story every time it is read." what I can glean on a first run through makes me ecstatic; I can't wait to see what story I hear during the next foray into this poem. I can see why it would take a thousand eyes.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 H4739b 2012