92
Rapple Drive
by Lyn Lifshin
$15.95, perfect-bound paperback, published in USA by Coatlism Press; available on Amazon.com, or buy direct from Coatlism Press
Reviews:
"Her poems in Rolling Stone stayed on my wall longer than anyone's." -- Ken Kesey
"You might as well get used to it: Lifshin is here to stay. For men, she's sexy. For women, she's an archetype of gutsy independence. As a poet, she's nobody but herself. Frightingly prolific and utterly intense. One of a king." -- San Francisco Review of Books
"These poems evoke in fantasy, but with a lot of anthropological detail . . . Lifshin's chipped line takes on a chantlike undertone, as of native voices themselves singing from the beyond." -- New York Times Book Review
"Lyn Lifshin is my hero. I became a writer because of her. The woman must write poetry while she sleeps, she is THAT prolific. Here's what I want readers to know about this brilliant author and this book. She will take you on a different journey with each poem. And don't be urned off by the word poetry. Great poets, and this is one of them, are great storytellers. They just happen to use the poetic form to tell their stories. You will laugh. You will cry. You will climb into bed with her and start to read her poems out loud to your lover. She is THAT GOOD! Lyn Lifshin is the most famous poetic goddess in the world, or she should be. We are all pressed for time. Lyn Lifshin serves us up a sampling of delicious hors doeuvres in 92 Rapple Drive. Her stand-alone poems allow us to devour her work one day at a time, one bite at a time. I read her poetry while brushing my teeth. Give me more, Lyn." —.Mary Kennedy Eastham, Author - The Shadow of A Dog I Can't Forget
Ernest Hemingway famously stated that “I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.” Lyn Lifshin is a minimalist, slice of life poet in that same long and strong American tradition of spare realism. In Lyn’s poetry, the images do not convey meaning. Rather, the images are the meaning. When she states that “geese / were black ovals / against lightened gray” we do not have to search for a meaning or a symbolic resonance but rather close our eyes and picture the black ovals and the lightened gray. As our earthly encounters with sensual experience have meaning for us, Lyn’s poetic and beautiful images have meaning and speak to that basic human core where we can not help but read the world in sensual symbolic images. — Norman Olson
Review by Alice Pero
In Lyn Lifshin's new collection, 92 Rapple Drive (Coatlism Press, 2008) Lyn Lifshin likes to make the world disappear. For those who hold tightly to their solid, carefully appointed universes, her poems might be a source of irritation as she challenges the very foundations upon which we stand. She, like the best magician, will show you the card, but you cannot notice the sleight of hand as it fades away. We do not know where 92 Rapple Drive is, but within its mysterious walls, whole lives come and go with a whisper and a wisp of wind. Those of us who have read much Lifshin recognize the characters: the woman pretending to be a wife, the mysterious email lover, the spurned lover, the dying mother, the cats. Yet these characters seem almost incidental to the disappearing act. The stage is set in the first poem, before anyone in my/life was in my life/not the cat,/the man s fingers,/blackberries tangled/under blood maple/tangle weed grazed/ankles and trees.... The poem has occurred before the poem was written. We go into an alternate time/space. It ends, shapes, moving in/shadows could be/whatever you imagined. The poems can be violent; a wine bottle is thrown, blood is spilt, a pregnant woman is murdered, yet still the blows are softened by this shape-shifting out of reality , by making things not enough or not remembered or put before or after time. A series of blues poems, starting with The Bad Bad Bad Bad Blues are more hard hitting, rhythmic, full of blue images, not just the/inky sapphire,not/the cobalt the blue/eyes crying in /its rain but the/black cat blues,/the cat jolting out/of bed the kill,/blue of sarcoma.... But each one of these poems has a way of avoiding the inevitable ending , slipping off into only half/way there blues, blues that have not fully arrived, blues we have to look for because there were more blue than/there were words. Lyn Lifshin s prolificalness is legendary. Here is a bright spirit burning with poetry. Like Anna Pavlova, who brought the swan alive, Lyn is a streak of adrenaline dancing that does not burn out. Her magic is that she can appear and disappear without a trace. Her poems will fill us with color and then let us drift away in the mist. But the creative muscles of this writer are that of steel and this is the true irony. A poem titled, December 29, 2005 could be an autobiography: with the windows open, the white orchard A woman darts toward the melting, leaps past soap and towels, Not afternoons, long slowly drowsy paragraphs but an exclamation point, a wild sentence and the fire and plum coming into the sky These are the real colors and this is the life of the poem, which is also the life of the spirit. We are fortunate to have this sublime poet leaping to us with her wild poems. --Alice Pero
Cover Design by Ra Gabriel
Copyright c. 2007 by Lyn Lifshin. All Rights Reserved.