Lyn Lifshin
Lyn Lifshin’s many collections of poetry include Katrina, Lost Horses, and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness. She split her time between New York and Virginia and was the subject of the documentary film Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. She died in 2019.
— From August 2020The Other Side Of The Moon
A Tribute To Lyn Lifshin
A submission from Lifshin would often include dozens of poems about a single subject: a relationship, a memory, dancing the tango. (Dance — including ballet and ballroom — was her second great love, after writing.)
August 2020The Pearls
An engagement present from my husband’s parents, / they seemed like something from a yearbook photograph. / I’d have preferred a wrought-iron pendant, costume / beads that caught the sunlight.
June 2015Three Days Before My Mother’s Birthday
I run into a young woman almost staggering across / the street. I’m surprised to see it’s someone I / know. She seems pale.
May 2010Carl’s Department Store Bathroom
was on the third floor up, past slipcovers and tablecloths. There was even an / elevator girl in a black-and-white uniform who listed each floor’s contents, / Ladies’ apparel, china, silver plate, until almost halfway into the nineties, / when Carl’s, the last of three department stores downtown, took down its last Christmas / window, outlasting my mother, who near the end was no longer able to tear through / dress racks for bargains, and sat thinly on a chair
October 1997
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