Malala
by Lyn Lifshin
Paperback 148 pages, $17.00 (list)
ISBN: 978-0-986600-2-1
(January 20, 2014)
Available from Amazon and
Poetic Matrix Press
www.poeticmatrix.com
MALALA
Introduction:
Malala Yousafzai is a teenager from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the Taliban banned girls from attending school. Known for her education and women’s rights activism, Malala, then fifteen, was shot in the head and neck by a Taliban gunman while returning home on a school bus on October 9, 2012. She survived. She has written an autobiography, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. In 2013, at sixteen, she became the youngest person ever nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
It would be difficult to imagine that any reader, or student, or involved citizen of the earth could be unaware of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year old Pakistani girl shot in the head and neck by a Taliban extremist and left for dead for the crime of advocating education for women. The girl has, after all, become a hero, a symbol, even a voice for all that champion knowledge over darkness.
Malala has been celebrated in documentary, appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and awarded the National Peace Award by the Pakistani government. If, however, as Shelley proclaimed, “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” her story has always cried out for a poet.
What an answer she’s received! Lyn Lifshin’s Malala weaves dream and reality, and the worlds of the Pakistani girl and the poet, into a testament to bravery and a ringing condemnation of the forces of hatred everywhere they’re found. It is a tribute to this new and inspiring work by perhaps the most widely published of American poets that one leaves its pages feeling, as one should, that Malala is an irresistible force while the Taliban, for all the terror they inspire, are remembered as essentially small, even pathetic. The reader will leave this work energized and transformed, or, as Lifshin describes Malala herself:
“…darting all over
like a hummingbird
that can’t get enough
of what it’s after.”
Bruce Woods is a poet, editor, and novelist. His novel Royal Blood has recently been announced by Knox Robinson Press, London.
Throughout Lyn Lifshin's illustrious career as a poet, she has always been a strong advocate for her gender, so it is not a stretch to imagine how the plight of a remarkable Pakistani child, shot by the Taliban in 2012 for speaking out about the right of girls to be educated in her country, has aroused her ire and her fire. For many in the U.S., Malala's story was merely a blip on the TV news, but with her trademark eye for vivid particulars, and genuine empathy, Lifshin gives us images that cannot (and should not) be ignored. When Lifshin hones in on the pink dress Malala was wearing on the day she got shot, she is reminding us of the world's whole history of violence, from the pink dress of Jackie Kennedy on the day her husband was fatally shot in the head, to the pink ribbons that have now become a symbol of women's endurance. Your own passions will be stirred by these urgent poems about a brave young woman, finely crafted by one of our bravest poets - and we say "Brava" to both!
— Cindy Hochman, Poet, proofreader, book reviewer, editor-in-chief of First Literary Review-East and author of The Carcinogenic Bride.
Lyn Lifshin, in her newest book Malala, continues to prove that no one else can write such explosive and moving poems. I loved the poems about Malala's dreams, feelings, fears, not only moving but so very informative. She's a major force for young girls and women, will be a role model in Pakistan and internationally. This is a major book of hers obviously. She continues to reign as Queen of the Small Press poets. Lyn Lifshin's newest book (and perhaps her most important book of her illustrious career) Malala should be in the running for every poetry prize of 2014. Lifshin is at the height of her powers in this amazing book that should be in every library, nationally and internationally.
— Laura Boss, Editor: Lips Author: Flashlight (Guernica Editions)
I was so moved by these pieces. Lyn Lifshin's Malala is a compelling work; her writing touches and stings the reader. This book shows that Ms. Lifshin's beautiful poetics can illuminate even the most dark and awful realities, bringing them home in words that make us all understand. Malala is an important work in both literary and social contexts."
—Ted E. F. Roberts, Love Etc. Poetry & Haiku, currently working on Poems: New and Used.
When Malala Yousafzai slipped her pink dress over her dark
curls that October 9th morning in 2012, neither she, nor anyone
who knew her, could have imagined how radically changed and
different her life would be from that afternoon on. It would be a
long time, if ever, before she could slip back into her room and the
bed she had called her own in the Swat district of Pakistan’s
northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Sample Poems |
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RUSHING TO THE METRO ALREADY A LITTLE LATE ON MY WAY TO BALLET I NEARLY SKID ON ACORNS, CATCH MYSELF I think of Malala, maybe rushing, never |
MALALA'S THIRD DREAM OF MILITARY HELICOPTERS no longer throwing toffee |
SHE SAID SHE COULDN'T SEE TO WALK EASILY in her long gray drab |
BEFORE THE TALIBAN CLOSED DOWN HER SCHOOL IN THE SWAT FAMLLYthe war |
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