Lola the Interpreter

The wry and sprawling final offering from the late, great Hejinian (Fall Creek) comprises a book-length prose poem in which the speaker moves through the motions and emotions of the “every day,” engaging with a cast of local characters. By doing so, Hejinian and her narrator explore a central philosophical concern: What does it mean to be a thinking, perceiving individual in a society of thinking, perceiving individuals? “I am just one of many irritable efficiency-demonstrating pedestrians pushing past,” Hejinian writes with the characteristic mixture of wit and wisdom that define her impressive oeuvre. Through the book’s many leaps and bounds across time, place, and literature, she questions, lauds, and critiques the human capacity for attention, reason, interpretation, memory, and freedom, playing what she calls “the phenomenal world’s ongoing game of hide and seek.” “Often,” Hejinian writes, “the reasoning human is like a squirrel or packrat pitting things in strange or unwarranted or unreceptive places.” A sharp poetic investigation of being, this will appeal to curious readers who want to know themselves, and others, more acutely. (Oct.)