I first laid eyes on Lyn when I was 23. Someone had shown me a poem of hers—something about a horse—that seemed both intellectually challenging and radically unsentimental; pastoral, in a way (she was living in rural Mendocino County then), yet acute. That poem drew me to her talk “Chronic Ideas” at Bob Perelman’s loft in San Francisco in September 1977; we must have met then or shortly thereafter.

Early in our friendship, I remember Lyn exhorting me not to defer so much to my elders—not to cower or sell myself short. I don't remember her words, exactly; the message was something like, “Be alive!” “Take responsibility for yourself!” She was not a coddler.

She was an enthusiast, mostly of ideas and persons, and seemingly happiest talking. Many of the enthusiasms we shared had to do with the natural world: first birds; then crop gardening; then, more recently, trees. In the early 90s we rototilled and planted most of her back yard with vegetables. Lyn liked to call it our F=A=R=M. A particularly animated discussion around then, about the flowering parts of a Mimulus we'd just planted somewhere, prompted her to purchase two loupe magnifiers, one for each of us, to use whenever we felt the urge.

She was also an organizer. In 1990, she invited me to join in the 5 Plus 5 travel-translation project she and Arkadii Dragomoschenko were then putting together: five US poets paired with five Russian poets for real-time translation and readings. (Kit Robinson has written a wonderful memoir of this trip, which took us to Stockholm, Helsinki, and Leningrad.) We laughed at the comic masks of Bush and Gorbachev pasted all over Helsinki in advance of their summit. But we considered ourselves the more relevant ambassadors—poets of the world.

That world being what it is, Lyn and I often found ourselves together on picket lines. During the struggles over privatization and tuition hikes on the UC Berkeley campus in 2009, Lyn, completely on her own initiative as far as I know, convened a powerful caucus of faculty, student, and union groups, including my own union. The Solidarity Alliance, as we were called, met weekly throughout that year of crisis. The shared sense of purpose was immensely satisfying (and our actions were not insignificant). We signed our emails “Solidarity” and meant it.

Solidarity (or something like critical empathy?) seemed to drive much of Lyn’s life and thought. This played out in so many iterations, usually involving drinking and talking—as feminists resisting the male energies of the early Language scene; as poets, protesters, and UCB colleagues; and often just as friends. Our last time together was shortly before she died. She was weak and frail but pleased to have finished up lingering projects, to be done with chemo, to be having a drink. Her daughter, Anna, rang while we were chatting. Lyn laughed and kibbitzed with her. When her husband, Larry, came to gather her up, he called out, “There you are!”—as if to an especially beloved truant.