Fragment, Sentence and Memory of the Self in a Poetic Neonarrative

Abstract

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.