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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.
About the author
Lyn Hejinian (1941-2024) was the John F. Hotchkis Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of many books, including
Tribunal, published by Omnidawn in 2019.
Summary
The Unfollowing is a sequence of elegies, mourning public and personal loss. The poems are composed entirely of non sequiturs, demonstrating a refusal to follow aesthetic proprieties, and a rejection of the logic of mortality and capitalism.
