The Unfollowing

by Lyn Hejinian

The Unfollowing is a sequence of elegies, mourning public as well as personal loss. The grief is not coherent. Though the poems are each fourteen lines long, they are not sonnets but anti-sonnets. They are composed entirely of non sequiturs, with the intention of demonstrating, if not achieving, a refusal to follow aesthetic proprieties, and a rejection of the logic of mortality and of capitalism. Outrage, hilarity, anxiety, and ribaldry are not easily separated in the play of human emotions. And they are all the proper, anarchic medium for staying alive.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2016

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]

I went back and forth with my rating.

The idea of this book—crafting anti-sonnets that explore the breakdown of logic and the follow of lines in poetic forms when faced with grief—totally captivated me and won me over. I found myself writing poems in this style, exploring the breakdown of sense and the logical (even temporal, spatial) sense of following that Hejinian explores here.

However, I can't help but feel like there were severe lags and lapses in the force of this collection. Like this book could have been an unbelievably breathtaking chapbook, but felt a bit bloated as a full-length piece. However, some of the repetition in the vocabulary did pull me into the book.

I think this was a brave and wonderful work and concept. I just wonder if there were better ways to demonstrate it and put it to work. I admire Hejinian for her determination and imagination, though.

[Jade Wootton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the idea of the anti-sonnet, not sure how much I loved the execution.

(I sure am reading a lot of Hejinian lately, huh 🧐 almost like I might be … preparing to publish a piece on her work 🤫)

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was able to really get into these anti-sonnet grief experiments. The "unfollowing" of text and meaning from line-to-line is so curious in reading. I liked to read each line as its own piece and then the whole poem as a piece and then the whole manuscript as its own entity and was able to really richly engage with all this once you let go of a certain logical following sense and meaning from line to line it curiously emerges in manifold ways and readings.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 4 out of 5]

"O child, be contemporary, your soul an ornament of consciousness / In the statue's rock is insouciant life, respite, lingering, hard"
"We can't stop life from bellowing at death and life has the advantage since death can't bellow"

[Rae Jager · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled to find grounding in these unsonnets. Too many non sequiturs made for a frustrating read towards the end of the book, where I was expecting some sort of climax or narrative to grasp.

[Yusuf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long live Lyn Hejinian!

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those collections I will hold on to and garner deeper meaning throughout my life

[Samira Abed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible way to view language. These units really overwhelm me.

[Zack]

It was fun and interesting. But it also could have probably been about half as long and been a much better book.