Karla Kelsey Reviews Lyn Hejinian's Tribunal

Karla Kelsey reviews Lyn Hejinian's Tribunal, published this April by Omnidawn, for Hyperallergic. "Although 'speculative' has only occasionally been applied to Lyn Hejinian’s work, her 40 years of innovation with language makes a case for the word’s original meaning as apt to her writing," writes Kelsey. More:

Synthesizing techniques Hejinian has honed since the beginning of her career, Tribunal challenges assumptions of what poetry can think through, and how thinking as a form of language transpires.

The first series, “A Human of Mars,” opens the book with an overt nod to speculative literary genres, working with the trope of the alien planet in 52 numbered sections. While writers such as H.G. Wells explore Mars as an allegorical vehicle through character-driven narrative, “A Human of Mars” is language-driven and unfolds in an ambient flow...