Ballroom
Lyn Lifshin
WHEN I WAS
NO LONGER
THE OLD PHOTOGRAPHS
HE FELL FOR
that long legged babe in a
bikini on some beach
on white sand he gazed
at dazed. When I was
no longer the sun
he wanted to blind me,
my legs a glue his
wife glowered at,
still was lost in. Then
I was no longer as
addictive as oxycontin,
a narcotic I was his
dealer for. He read poem
after poem, would be
my number 1 fan. Some
days he tracked my
poems to places no one
goes, my words were
seductive as my
legs on the web. In
ballroom he quotes
lines, my metaphors for
tango which was
of course perfect, the
love, the hate, the
staccato where nothing
is as it is for long
ISBN 1-59661-142-1
286 pages/$9
In Ballroom we have Lifshin at her absolutely most evocative, energetic, seductive. The whole book centers on "encounters," guys and not gals plural, but Lifshin herself. Some negative encounters, but most of the time it's a walloping WELCOME TO THE SEXUAL ENCOUNTER HERE AND NOW. As always tactile, visual, deep—psychological, perhaps Lifshin's single most powerful book. They're always powerful, but this one is screaming—not just for today's reader, but down the road in time-travel classes about twenty-first century poetry that brings you irresistibly into the ecstatic, squirming NOW.
—Hugh Fox
With Ballroom, my 30-year addiction to Lyn Lifshin is reaffirmed and continues, unabated. Each new Lifshin work unravels, ravels and reravels me, shocks me that I'm once again surprised at the author's depth and range. Ballroom is an invitation to the dance of Mad Girls, lovers, obsession, self-doubt, growth, regressions, transgressions...so potent, sexual, and thought-provoking in ways only Lyn Lifshin can plumb. This book tantalizes, lets us find new sides of the author's voice that have been living in the margins.
Ballroom inspires the same freshness and glistening in me as did the very first book of Lyn's I read those three decades ago. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Lyn. I love this book.
—Ted Roberts
The poems in Lyn Lifshin's new collection, Ballroom, are vividly descriptive and astute in psychological insight. There is a raw beauty in this book only found in an authentic portrayal of human life. Generations hence will read this book to see how women felt in the last half of the 20th and the beginning decade of the 21st centuries. In the decades I've read Lifshin poems she is invariably interesting. Like dancing, the poems in this book are on the move in a variation of emotions usually with lovers, ex-lovers, or would-be lovers. The speaker moves through the narrative with clarity and is utterly convincing in Lifshin's unique idiom. There's a breathing humanity in these poems, which future generations can read to feel the grit and grace of feminine life in our era.
The precise imagery of these poems shines and elucidates, as in "What I can't see is/ most with me: those/dreams of being/ underwater, orange/ feet of geese their/ only sun"
and in "...Skies of/small blackbirds/like tossed coals." The predominantly terse lines of the poems are expansively suggestive, the mark of strong poetry. The book has the smell of life, the pleasant and the unpleasant. It is about what we have in common, showing a sort of Everywoman, and by implication through the eyes of a passionate woman, Everyman. We have all had the experience of "falling in love with somebody wrong" and undergone "pain and distress/ or joy." The book suggests that passion is like a fading tattoo. It makes us feel the joy and pain stars might feel if they suddenly became human.
Though there are elements of striking humor, the book is always deeply serious and moving. Using the metaphor of the dance there is an intense bravery in the collection in admission that the human condition provides only transient security in the embrace of a lover or otherwise. We are ever in danger of destruction from the very objects of affection we seek. In addition to the sexual ecstasy apparent in some poems, at times we're shown the heavy hand of time tapping our shoulders, leading us into the final waltz. The work is gently brutal, "a setting holding a jewel," with the verve of the dance a principal focus. Once read, you will not forget this magnificent book.
-William Page
All poets write about their lives, mostly, and mostly the poems are either self congratulatory (“I got laid!”) or whiny (“I got laid but it was awful!”) Lyn Lifshin is the rare poet who writes about herself without it ever being about herself. Without ever writing as if her real message was ‘Look at me!'
While many poets write about themselves, Lifshin uses what at a glance are poems about herself to capture A Bigger Picture. Which is why her poems are often short stories.
There are 248 poems in Ballroom. To pick one:
ON THE STALLED METRO
on my way to ballet,
wild to dance the
voodoo wild blues
out of me while he
dreams of Audrey
Tautou and Javier
Bardem. He is
forgetting my words,
the poems he
remembered longer
than many. What
can you expect from
a man who wanted
to collect stones
and be a zoo keeper,
cage animals, paint
and trap what once
was free, to have
them, like all the
women who trail him,
caught for him in
case he's in
the mood
There are about forty-eight different things going on in those 23 lines. We are on a stalled train with two people. Same train, different planets. The stalled train is a metaphor for their relationship. How quickly we go from her vision of herself as a wild dancing animal (needing release) to what this guy's job is, and how he sees animals…and women.
Will this relationship last?
Lifshin is into dancing ballet in a major way (thankfully not a Black Swan way.) Was she riding on a train on the way to ballet when she thought of this? Was she in a relationship with this guy? If so, why?
Should the reader care? Nope. The poem, however it was born, now is all grown up and in its own world. The poem is not about her.
Lyn Lifshin is one of our great living poets, which is a hell of a lot better than being one of our great dead poets. Unfortunately most people only pay attention to poets after they croak. This may be because poets are, generally speaking, seen as safer to society when dead.
Readers familiar with Lifshin know why she's so worth reading. She has perhaps a gazillion books of poetry published. On top of that she has edited several very well received anthologies. She tours regularly. Where does she get time to dance? It is entirely likely Lifshin does not sleep or takes drugs—more on this in a moment.
Be that as it may, most general readers have probably have never heard of Lifshin. Those are the readers who avoid poetry for many reasons: they see the form as too self-involved, it is passé, rhymes are as loved as mimes. For those readers, Ballroom is a great introduction to a great poet.
Ballroom is neither a dash-off nor a quick read. There are 248 poems. No, this reviewer has not read all the poems. It takes long enough to write a review, but to carefully read 248 poems would take several months. And good poems deserve a good read: read it once, stop, read it again, then put the book down and putter about with the poem fluttering inside you. Perhaps this is why using the washroom is an ideal time to read a poem.
248 poems covers a lot of territory. In Ballroom Lifshin dances through everything in her life. These are not political or issues poems in the normal sense. There are plenty o' issues but on the surface the poems are about her. As noted, many poets write about themselves but without offering anything the reader is interested in. On the other hand, all readers are interested in destructive relationships.
WITH YOU
I could be a drunk.
You could be what
I swore I wouldn't
long for then can't
resist. Just a small
gulp. Doesn't have
to be champagne.
That cold lip,
your lip. I imagine
bending to fit my
mouth over it like
someone kissing a
sleeping child
He doesn't have to be champagne, he could be cheap beer, his lips are cold and when she kisses him he'll wake up and like a needy child suck her breast. Real attractive! Bet he'll leave a hickey!
Okay, there aren't too many relationships that seem to be working well here. Let's try again:
THE I'M IN A LAWN CHAIR DREAM WITH A IN THE TUB,
THE CLOSEST I'VE COME TO HAVING HIM
it's the old, if you stop wanting
something so wildly,
then it happens movie in
darkness. Lets say lately
fantasy is what is and it's
all avatar and this avatar
is flesh, more real than
when he's holding me in
tango, hips rolling toward
where they should. In
the dream, it's summer,
a blue lake. My body's
perfect enough to wear
a string bikini I know will
be in a puddle around
my jeweled toes but it's
this moment, suspended
between what I've ached
for and what, if I could
keep going on and never
come back from, I would.
No scars, my skin as it
was, my hair thicker. Rose
scent on my bare taut legs
and wrist, gashes in my
skin dissolving. I'm a film
in film run backward
until he's about to
step out, unfold me as
he unfolds the towel. I
want to freeze this moment,
stay on the verge of,
waiting for what else
will unfold to unfold
This seems playful and pleasant! Of course, she suffers from repeated daydreams so her real life is awful. Her body is not really perfect, she has scars, including gashes in her skin. But don't you think that the ongoing movie fantasy she keeps replaying will probably at least end kind of nicely? Except she is freezing the moment of unfolding because she knows that after she's unfolded he'll turn out to be Freddy Krueger.
It is hard to say why some poems in particular are immediate grabbers. As mentioned, there is the question of how Lifshin manages her prolificosity: to write and publish and tour and write some more:
NO SLEEP AND
TOO MANY PILLS
water pools in the
roses. My head's
under water in the
rouge blues. So
it's not raining
but it will be. This
blue Friday, a
roach I can't
escape without
a wall of them
burying me
Never before, to this reviewer's limited knowledge, has a Friday been described as a roach. How appropriate! And it is a blue Friday, as are most, and we know if she goes out Friday night to have a good time and escape, she'll end up checking into a roach motel.
Reviewed by: Victor Schwartzman