Hearing

“Piercing, whirring — Hearing is an impossibly accomplished double poetic achievement. Hejinian and Scalapino seek, practice and find attunement to all that is happening — that is, experience — having entered into a covenant to listen. Friendship is not a mere basis or occasion for the poems. Its wonders — of love, misunderstanding, faithfulness — are the body for the poem, and it, too, is subject to their watchfulness; it is undergone and changed. Reading, we feel the acceleration of their learning, their hesitations, dwelling, departure. I cannot imagine more fruitful pages. “Whooping,” joyous, exemplary, exact—”
— Simone White

Hearing is the long-awaited second book in a series of collaborations by Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino organized around each of the five senses. Their first collaboration in this series, Sight, was published by Edge Books in 1999. Hejinian and Scalapino were nearing the completion of Hearing when Leslie Scalapino died in 2010. Ten years later, the book is published for the first time with a preface by Hejinian and an afterword by Judith Goldman. [publisher’s note]