Larry Eigner

I really like Larry Eigner. Seems like my students got into him a little, too, this past week - at least they got the general sense of what his poems are doing - what his concerns are, and how the form of his poems reflects that. The poems (esp. from the 70s on) feel light and at the same time "architectural" - you're aware of the white space, but you're also aware of the material effort with which the words are accomplished.

I'll never forget when his poem "Again, Dawn" was inscribed in 3-ft.-high letters on the outside walls of the University Art Museum at Berkeley. Each of the (many) walls represented an individual line, with the corners being the line breaks. So the materiality of the language was emphasized, as was (if you read the whole thing) the temporal and physical act of moving through the poem. If anyone has photos of that, I'd love to get copies for my class.

I had the pleasure of hearing him read a couple of times - with Jack Foley as his "interpreter." He was definitely a "presence."