Fragment, Sentence and Memory of the Self in a Poetic Neonarrative
Author
Brito, ManuelDate
1999Abstract
The new narrative style has invented new abilities where it is not
only difficult to distinguish prose from poetry for example, but has also
delved into new paradigms that transform its possibilities. One radical
example of this new position is a work by Lyn Hejinian, My Life, primarily
conceived as an autobiography in prose poems, but whose literary
potential I believe converts it into a narrative where imagination and
sensitivity play a primordial role. A first reading of My Life allows one to
glimpse that its style is opposed to the old poetic and prosaic modes. It is
capable of interconnecting the narration with: uncovering the author’s
life process, the simultaneity of events by playing with space and time,
exercise of memory and the lack of ordered references.