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from The Fatalist: Come October, it's the lake not the border

By Lyn Hejinian b. 1941 Lyn Hejinian

Come October, it’s the lake not the border

that has been redrawn. Thinking

about the event afterwards, I realize how remarkably well-prepared

the girls are. There don’t seem to be any slouches

among them. Please tell them I say hello and that we’ll need 14

for the green salad and 14 for the apple tarts between

with some rapid washing in clear water I remember as play

and planning in childhood, preparing until the very last moment

for a gripping narrative that was itself perpetually given over

to improvisations and asymmetrical collaborations that could run

for days. That makes another 14. It was ”the word“ or “the world” in 1981

when we undertook to talk about the phrase

“once in a while” once in a while

noting the vagueness then named “a while” and how “once” the phrase

recurs and therefore means more than once

the “while” is defined. We too are in “a while”

and when “once” next occurs, if the basic design suits

you, we will need a bit of modestly biographical contextualization

for November. I’m going to put some thought to something

implausibly contemporary which perhaps isn’t wise

since between then and now no new coincidences have been noted

just one large color photograph of bespangled cowgirls

herding heavy bulls up the avenue that opens this week carefully

wearing baby blue boots to take out the garbage

but it never rained. At the end of the month, Halloween should be clear.

Source: The Fatalist (Omnidawn Publishing, 2003)

Biography

A founding figure of the Language writing movement of the 1970s, and an influential force in the world of experimental and avant-garde poetics, Lyn Hejinian’s poetry is characterized by an unusual lyricism and descriptive engagement with the everyday. Like most Language writing, her work enacts a poetics that is theoretically sophisticated. While Language writing is stylistically diverse and, as a movement, difficult to reduce . . .

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