Situations, Sings

by Jack Collom, Lyn Hejinian

A collection of twelve formally distinct poems collaboratively written by Jack Collom and Lyn Hejinian. The two poets began working together in 1992, and over the years they have developed a repertoire of forms and procedures, all intended to extend the possibilities for invention, play, and the unfolding of unforeseeable meaning. Both poets embrace collaborative authorship as a means of challenging aesthetic preconceptions. In the process, they frequently venture across thematic limits, discovering unexpected coherences. The poems often give themselves over to pleasure, but they are governed by the logic of poetic language and they carry considerable metaphysical depth. Jack Collom is the author of seventeen small-press books of poetry, including Red Car Goes By (Tuumba Press, 2001) and two CDs. He spent the early 1980s in New York, where he taught poetry to children in the Poets In Public Service and Teachers & Writers programs. In 1980 and again in 1990 he was awarded a fellowship in poetry by the National Endowment for the Arts. Collom lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado. Published collections of Lyn Hejinian ’s writing include Writing Is an Aid to Memory , My Life , and The Language of Inquiry . From 1976 to 1984, Hejinian was the editor of Tuumba Press; she is currently the co-director of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets. In the fall of 2000, she was elected the sixty-sixth fellow of The Academy of American Poets. She teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

160 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Jack Collom was born in Chicago in 1931 and grew up in nearby Western Springs, where he spent much of his boyhood walking in the woods and bird watching. After graduating from the Forestry School at Colorado A&M College, Collom joined the US Air Force and wrote his first poems in Tripoli, Libya. He lived in Germany a Zeitlang, then returned stateside and worked in factories for twenty years. He was an adjunct professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado and worked extensively with schoolchildren for thirty-five years. Collom was the author of twenty-four books and chapbooks as well as editor (with commentaries) of three books of writings by children. Collom was twice been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, in part for his experimental nature writings. He had four grown children and was married to the writer Jennifer Heath.

Reviews

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Situations, Sings turns out to be one of the most grounded and magical collaborations I've seen in years.

from Questionably:

Isn't writing this on a blank page as cruel as landing a plane?