Bury The Name: Lyn Lifshin And Her Poems

B1284-BS10

Lyn Lishin, yes her. Shall we? I think we should. Why? Because shit should not live forever.

Before we jump in to the poetry that is the work of Lyn Lifshin, let us get to know a bit about her and what others think about her. To start, Lyn Diane Lifshin is around seventy years old. She was born and raised in Vermont. She attended university at Syracuse University and the University of Vermont. She wrote her thesis on Dylan Thomas, whose poetry has little to do with her own. Additionally, she has other college experience, including getting her Doctoral degree from SUNY Albany. She began getting her works published in the 70’s, or so it’s claimed, and also began teaching the spurious palaver that is creative writing. Known lovingly as “The Queen of the Lit Mags” and “The Queen of Modern Romance Poetry” (something for us to take into account and look closely for), she has, it is claimed, been published by every literary magazine. Finally, she has two homes. (Thank you Wikipedia.) But what else is written of this overpublished poetry-bot?

Looking at her own website, we are told she has written over 125 books and edited four anthologies. She has won numerous awards and has had a documentary made about her. Additionally, “she has been praised by Robert Frost, Ken Kesey and Richard Eberhart, and Ed Sanders has seen her as ‘a modern Emily Dickinson.’” Let us for now ignore the fact that Robert Frost died in 1963 while it is claimed that Lifshin began publishing her works on a regular basis in the 70’s. I don’t care if you don’t. In fact, Baudelaire enjoys reading through my poems; I summon his demon from the grave on a regular basis just for this purpose. It is mentioned more than once on her page, in the same breath, that her poems have been published in most poetry publications. She has also been published by Black Sparrow Press, known for publishing the impeccable legend of Charles Bukowski, with whom she seems to share certain underserved fame, although she may be a better poet than him—no, let’s not even go there!

Is that enough? The rest just repeat her credentials and her legend, perhaps giving her a kiss on the crotch before moving on to a glorious display of her anorexic poems; yes, her poems look a bit like her, skinny, hairy, and lacking in beauty. So, having seen what we’ve covered so far, you can see why I’d like to dig this waif a grave. She is a legend in the minds of her peers and her fans, all shitty poets, surely. The idea that Robert Frost, or even Dylan Thomas, could have anything to do with her work is no less than laughable. And Emily Dickinson, no matter how shallow she could get, could never stoop this low. The Romantics, on the other hand—no, there is no other hand! I mean, Shelley, Keats, and—Lifshin! Who are these halfwits kidding? Yes, hopefully most of us have read these famous poets. Perhaps you can revert back to their celebrated poems while we eviscerate the bony bonbons of Thin Lifshin. The boys are indeed back in town, but unfortunately for hacks like her they don’t give a damn for small-time celebrity; in fact, they bring the damning tag of notoriety. We’ll examine the verse that came of her heroine hand until it makes us reach for the airsick sack.

We’ll cull our selections from the eight published in issue number ten of the Ann Arbor Review. Note that out of the thirty-nine poets published in that issue only Lifshin got anything like this representation. The best poet in the issue got two poems published, the only two in the issue worth reading. Now, remember as we move on that she wrote 125 books filled with this wastewater poetry in need of a syntactical sewage plant. First poem, here it goes:

ALL AFTERNOON WE

read Lorca

by five snow

blurred the

glass. February. I

leaned against

those chill panes.

Gypsies

burned through the

snow with apples

You in the

other room

I was thinking

Don’t let

this be some

warmth I can

move near

and never know

Halving the poem, we see immediately a desultory approach. It looks like she was trying to crib some ideas from Frost to no good effect, while mentioning Lorca, another poet she can’t touch. Do you notice the difference? In a recent poem I examined of Ginsberg’s, in another essay, he mentions Lorca in passing as well, but early in his career, Ginsberg could hold a flame to that Spanish lyricist. Note Lifshin’s title first, there’s nothing there worth even relating, just another afternoon.

read Lorca

by five snow

blurred the

glass. February. I

leaned against

those chill panes.

Gypsies

burned through the

snow with apples

Okay, first we get a command—or a confession that we shall not care about. If a poet commands it should point to something meaningful, something worth turning our attention to. Not here, just Lorca, that is Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca, a name that’s a poem in itself. Now, what has “read Lorca by five” to do with “snow blurred the glass?” And what’s with the Godforsaken capitalization and punctuation? Is she writing a quick email? Yes, too much information, snow is meaninglessly adhered to “by five.” Who cares about any of this? The glass is repeated in February, today that is, this afternoon, and then we get nonsense, Gypsy apples burning through the snow. Yes, Robert Frost wrote often of apples in winter, but what has that do with this? So far this is horrible. Just think of any worthwhile element of poetry, try metaphor, lyricism, the freshly approached trope, witty use of rhetoric, irony, contradiction, images, anything. Let’s not even tempt music or any kind of rhyme. Even rhythm—it doesn’t have to be metrical to have a poetic effect, e.g. Ginsberg or Whitman. Nothing from this famous no one.

You in the

other room

I was thinking

don't let

this be some

warmth I can

move near

and never know

Two ideas/sentences in one breath on eight lines. First, “You are in the other room.” Again, who cares? Then the climactic finish so soon, “some warmth I can move near and never know.” Yes, this could be meaningful, if it were even thought out and if it related to anything in the rest of the work. You are not Shakespeare with your desperate last grasp for a clever ending. Yes, the person in the next room should most likely be the source of warmth. But why even include “I was thinking don’t let this be?” And, by the way, the last line should read “but never know.” It’s much stronger, but again . . . Amateur hour. This is a little girl’s ramblings with the addition of a slight blasé but unpoetic complexity. I once knew a warmth that I stuck my finger in, but that later. Next:

IN VENICE, THAT NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER

17 cats ran in and

out windows that

never closed as Hari

Krishna jingled up

from Muscle Beach.

The house I stayed in

quieted by 4 in the

afternoon when every

one left for work. I

curled in a stranger’s

yellow terry cloth

robe as if to soak up

some sun color. I

hoped I’d be charmed

in tight jeans and fur

jacket, imagined them

sliced from my back,

butterfly wings, as

angels and truckers

howled foxy and pulled

up close enough to

touch my arms clutch-

ing a bottle of Chianti

or scotch I hoped

would help me flare

and glitter like some

blood sun the Pacific

gulps

What have we here? A metaphysical tract, a sloppy collage of images that add up to a vacuous display. And the punctuation and anti-capitalization following no logic. Yes, logic, that is one quality that helps to hold your poem together (basic thought, thinking, and writing). This poem starts from nothing and ends in an even deeper void. Piece by piece:

17 cats ran in and

out windows that

never closed as Hari

Krishna jingled up

from Muscle Beach.

The house I stayed in

quieted by 4 in the

afternoon when every

one left for work. I

curled in a stranger’s

yellow terry cloth

robe as if to soak up

some sun color. I

Is there a significance to seventeen? Need I own an occult dictionary? Okay, they’re communitarian hippies with cats and no screen on the windows. No doubt rats are an additional possibility for this bunch. The title gives us a backdrop, Venice in November and December. Oh, God forgive her, Thomas Mann. Is it a Hari Krishna? Notice the capitalization, as if to avoid New Age blasphemy. Muscle Beach. Is that meant to be somehow ironic, in that twelve-year-old cynical sort of way? Look, they’re pumping iron and eating the same, and you’re chanting and eating veggies. We soon learn that some of the hippies (all but Lifshin?) work. Then she curled in a “stranger’s” robe, and like Annie Besant soaks up the vibes. How can an old woman be this devoid of depth? Brain damage from a long drug habit? This is the whimsical helter skelter of a girl of ten. Using these same words and some of the phrases, I could write at least a passable poem, but this witchy wordsmith fucks up everything at every turn; believe me, it’s difficult to be this bad; it takes practice.

hoped I’d be charmed

in tight jeans and fur

jacket, imagined them

sliced from my back,

butterfly wings, as

angels and truckers

howled foxy and pulled

up close enough to

touch my arms clutch-

ing a bottle of Chianti

or scotch I hoped

would help me flare

and glitter like some

blood sun the Pacific

gulps

Who or what is meant to charm her? This is a case of the most flagrant meaninglessness. Did a man—or woman—pass by while she was quickly passing off this poem for a quick publication? A rape fantasy, perhaps, with the cutting off of clothes, but the clothes become butterfly wings—tight jeans and fur jacket. Is that your metaphor or is that an intended symbol? What is this, hair metal? Angels are admixed with truckers, a very limp attempt at some sad irony or—I don’t know. A foxy howling, a touch of her arms, and booze that hopefully lights up this waif like a blood sun, but not just any blood sun, one that the Pacific swallows—gulps. Another poem far worse than bad, even worse than the last. Where’s the poem? Like Bukowski, she’s all poet and no poem. One wonders if she ever understood anything she ever read in verse, and this chick has a PhD? The many-lettered Doctor Solecist. I bet she has read much poetry, some of it even great, and she never picked up one trick or turn of the trade. But she’s so real, right? No! And not!

VENICE DAPHNE RUN BACKWARDS

the way that sandpiper runs

as close to the water

and then knows, pulls

back, but not

before he’s dug

into sea grass. I’m

walking out of branches,

wood, Daphne

run backwards, my own

breakwater this time.

Blue shells, sun

cupped in the arm of some

one who doesn’t own

or want to own me.

The leaves he pulls from

my skin are stained

with the verbs of someone

who didn't see what she could.

Salt air chews them.

We dream of Nantucket,

wine in a grey wood

someday. You know I never

wanted a man just

for myself

but didn't know that.

Gulls. Old women

unbutton black coats,

feel the light, dreams moving

in their throat like birds.

They are willow roots

hanging on under

the sand, pushing deep.

In this light, if they

were to unloosen a few

pins they would grow into

their hair, birds blown in the

sun toward cities rarely

found on maps.

Another Venice poem, this time one in which Daphne runs backwards to create the writer’s own breakwater—getting wordy there. Is this the common tongue that editors want, the real deal, the happening, hip, tell-it-straight barebones real-life writing that will get me published? To the short, yes. If this is the offal, the pabulum, that I must write to get published, why bother? Let’s continue the method of going at it in a couple “gulps.” Wasn’t that dramatic? Well, here’s your blood sun; don’t drink it too fast.

the way that sandpiper runs

as close to the water

and then knows, pulls

back, but not

before he’s dug

into sea grass. I’m

walking out of branches,

wood, Daphne

run backwards, my own

breakwater this time.

Blue shells, sun

cupped in the arm of some

one who doesn’t own

or want to own me.

The leaves he pulls from

my skin are stained

with the verbs of someone

who didn’t see what she could.

Salt air chews them.

Right away, we almost have a meaningful activity, the long-legged bird approaching the water, drawing back, and getting into the sea grass. But that’s it. Context is everything. It builds and it destroys; in this case, well, you know. Lifshin’s short of wood (symbolism? yes the pencil is a stump.), then Daphne, probably the mythological character since her name is capitalized, avoiding New Age blasphemy—this must be her connection to Romanticism, the New Age. How pathetic. If only some pathos. No one wants to own the homely Lifshin, even though they’ve managed to cup some sun. And, what the hell is this? Verbs of one who doesn’t see—“what she could.” ‘Lyricism’ and leaves in skin. The trite middle line, “Salt air chews them.” What or whom does it chew? Oh yeah, this poem sucks with such a suction that no one cares. Maybe people think she’s a good poet because she’s ugly—I mean it goes without saying, right? I would fuck you, but I’d rather read your book, and that is saying a lot.

We dream of Nantucket,

wine in a grey wood

someday. You know I never

wanted a man just

for myself

but didn’t know that.

Gulls. Old women

unbutton black coats,

feel the light, dreams moving

in their throat like birds.

They are willow roots

hanging on under

the sand, pushing deep.

In this light, if they

were to unloosen a few

pins they would grow into

their hair, birds blown in the

sun toward cities rarely

found on maps.

What does a good blueblood do in Nantucket? Drink “wine in a grey wood” . . . “someday.” That last word is key because it makes a meaningless activity that much more. And note the e in grey. How New-English. An unfinished ponder enters as fast as it dissipates, her man not for herself. And “but didn’t know that” is important how? To show that she didn’t know she didn’t want a man all to herself. The lack of sophistication is damning. Bukowski’s old women got lost and ended up in a Lyn Lifshin poem. And I don’t know what to ask first, something about dreams in throats or the birds they’re like (also in the throat)? Similar to my poor pantheist, her willow roots personify, but only slightly or maybe not at all in this case. The light has nothing to do with anything, then we have hair and pins, perhaps hairpins, perhaps old ladies growing into their hair—not one thing profound or even a pinprick below the surface. The phrase, “blown in the sun,” holds little of sense, though it also adds nothing to the poem, if that makes it better. And the big ending, “cities rarely found on maps.” Oh . . . my . . . God! Where are the poetic tropes, the rhetorical tools, the music, the lyricism, where is the versification of line upon line, the meaning behind lining, punctuation, capitalization, anything? Forget a Popesque paradox. Forget wit. No symbolism worth consideration, no play of meanings or sound, nor juxtaposing of ideas that correspond or contradict. Nothing. A mesh of dull images and groundless vocables, and not a thing to tie it together.

In case you haven’t lost your breakfast yet, we’ll try not to smell the decay of horrid prose and finish burying Lifshin. This is her last. If only.

LEMON WIND

all day

nobody wanted

to talk

the sleeping bags

were still wet

from the storm

in Cholla Vista

Nothing went right.

But later the

wood we

burned had a sweet

unfamiliar smell

and all night

we could taste

lemons in the wind

Yes, a recipe book entry, but not as meaningful. The trite prattle of everything commonplace and the most pathetic attempt at the bathetic.

all day

nobody wanted

to talk

the sleeping bags

were still wet

from the storm

in Cholla Vista

Nothing went right.

The first statement, conveniently isolated, is a completely trite and insipid offering. Next is a mere statement, and a statement about sleeping bags—a million horrible things could be said of it. Perhaps it’s a feeble attempt at the pretentious. And, “Nothing went right.” That is just horrid writing, forget poetry. Nothing ever goes my way, nothing ever works out, nothing’s what I write.

But later the

wood we

burned had a sweet

unfamiliar smell

and all night

we could taste

lemons in the wind

Nothing’s going right, but the wood smelled good, and, like, kind of, like, strange. And no, dear, those were not lemons in the wind, that was the deodorizer we sprayed to lessen the stench of your rotting corpse. We dug all last night so we would never have to taste your poetastry’s putridity again. And now you’re buried. And you neither burned out nor faded away; you never had a light to begin. A wickless candle imbued with puerile prattle, a New Age bauble. And yes, Lyn may be the worst ‘poet’ I’ve ever parsed. The legend of a what? She single-handedly shows the problem with the poetry publishing world in particular and the book publishing world more generally. I’m not sure if we’re done here, for she does deserve worse.

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