Chapter 8 Movement in the Present: Poetry as a Mindfulness Project in Bernadette Mayer’s Studying Hunger Journals

Abstract

Mayer started working on her project in 1972 while she was undergoing psychoanalysis because of anxiety. Studying Hunger was first published in 1975, but the entirety of the journals only saw publication in 2011. In her large volume that contains stream-of-consciousness prose mixed with occasional lineated poetry, Mayer focuses on observing the movements of her mind and her emotional and affective responses. The comment in the beginning of the book begs the question of what happens with Mayer’s attempt to transcribe “every transition of [...] her own mind.” While it is obvious that it is impossible to transcribe every thought that crosses one’s mind, because writing takes its time, I will discuss how Studying Hunger Journals presents a poetic experiment of observing instead of analysing the movements of her mind. This, I argue, shifts Mayer’s poetry away from its starting point in psychoanalysis towards what I will call a mindfulness project. I will make this argument through considering how Mayer’s experiment can be understood in cognitive terms. A related aim of this discussion is to consider what might happen cognitively and affectively when we read complex experimental poetry. Mayer wrote her journals as a tool to be used in psychoanalysis but also as a poetic experiment. She had previous experience from journal art projects, particularly from Memory (1972), which was originally a gallery