literature honors thesis
University of California, San Diego
spring 2023

The central inspiration for this project is Lyn Hejinian’s 1983 essay “The Rejection of Closure,” which has been crucial to my understanding of what she calls “open” and “closed” texts. Hejinian’s essay explores the limits of language and problematizes closure as an objective of writing, particularly poetry. I emphasize Hejinian’s work with quotes from “The Rejection of Closure” as epigraphs throughout Unready & Unformed, which is comprised of several long poems. During the early stages of my thesis, I learned how to make space for this project to flow without force. Allowing my reading-writing to not “make sense” right away (or at all) ensured that the work evolved organically. In situating my thesis within the context of Hejinian’s work, I want to emphasize the steps through which each piece of Unready & Unformed has been created, polished, and organized as crucial to the reader’s experience with the project.