The best of the poet Lyn Lifshin, selected from her work from 1970 through 1996. Lifshin writes with energy, fire, and truth of the common world of experience. Bearing signs of struggle, pain, and loss, these poems carry the history of the body with agony and pride, as enduring tokens of what it is to be alive. things I have and don’t have come from this moving between people like leaves like smoke. ―from “Drifting” Contents include Onyxvelvet (Autobiography), After Dark My Sweet (Love and Erotica), Despite Everything (Family), Blissful Misfits and Secret Faces (Other People), Black Trillium and Apricot Wind (Place) . The journal, Choice, called this collection, “Magnificently crafted poems...concise field reports from a woman warrior at the front line of feeling.”
Author
Lyn Diane Lifshin (1942) is an American poet and teacher. Born in Barre, VT, she was raised in Middlebury, VT. She earned a bachelor's degree in English from Syracuse University and a master's degree in English from the University of Vermont (writing a thesis on Dylan Thomas). She also studied at Brandeis University, the Bread Loaf School of English and attended the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Lifshin moved to Schenectady, NY in the 1970s with her then husband who worked for General Electric. She enrolled in a doctoral program in English at SUNY Albany, and began submitting her work for publication. She quickly began appearing in a variety of literary magazines. When she left SUNY, she began teaching creative writing workshops at various public venues such as libraries as well as at her home in Niskayuna, NY. Eventually, she began earning a living primarily from workshops, readings, and visiting faculty positions. Lifshin has been called "The Queen of the Lit Mags" and "The Queen of Modern Romance Poetry". Over 120 books and chapbooks of her work have been published. She has also edited 4 anthologies (appearing in innumerable others) and was the subject of the award winning documentary film, Not Made of Glass. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and cultural publications, including The American Scholar, Christian Science Monitor, Ploughshares, nthWORD, Blue Lake Review, Dunes Review, and Rolling Stone Magazine. Bibliographers and literary critics would be hard-pressed to find a literary journal that has not published at least one Lifshin poem at one time or another. To date, however, there is no comprehensive bibliography of her publications and unpublished manuscripts. She currently divides her time between a home in Niskayuna, NY and a residence in Virginia. (from Wikipedia)
