Before it’s LIGHT
by Lyn Lifshin

The cover of Lyn Lifshin's new book, BEFORE IT'S LIGHT: NEW POEMS,
an evocative young girl under an apple tree, charges the reader's energy
with birth, rebirth, and newness, the millenial energy of this year. I went
immediately to a section of the book called "BEWARE MY LOVE" (love and
erotica) because I have always admired Lifshin's love poems. A poem called
"IN HIS SECOND LETTER HE SAID" begins with:

he lived near water in a house
with no sky, except for the light
my letters brought him. He wrote
of jails, the times he threw stones
all day and wouldn't talk, said my
letters were the only thing that
touched him, my verbs on his skin.

and ends with:

Children followed his tracks, whispered
about the man who smelled of leaves.
Days were like paper erased so thin in
spots you could see thru it to where

dust gets more like snow
you couldn't lie down in but
I can still see where he had

Lifshin has the amazing ability to constantly capture the "new"
while retaining the "old", meaning she is innovative without losing her
identity, her individuality. her growth and development show a unique
exploration, a constant improvisation while retaining the brilliant
foundation of her discipline, her craft. Another love poem:

CANDLES IN US

saved for
something
like this
emergency
in the darkest
part of
the room
we move
by touch
melt and
are our
own roof
burning
against
the dark
rain

"CANDLES IN US" reminds me of the Japanese painters who allow one
line to flow until the painting is finished, allowing the spontaneity to
fuse with the fullness of the subject. Again, the poem is charged with a
new energy, and yet retains Lifshin's traditional stream of conscious method
which brings the reader into her subconscious.

Perhaps the most controversial and most provocative poem in the book is a poem from a section of the book called RED VELVET G-STRINGS AND APRICOT SIGHS. It is D. H. Lawrence from a woman's point of view. It is how poetry is the new religion. It is a new take on "God is Love." It is the one poem which represents best for me the millenium, because it revolutionizes some traditional ideas and makes them work anew on many levels

HE COULD GET RID OF A FEVER,
HE COULD MAKE A WOMAN COME

Jesus really was amazing but there's things nobody
knows. Sure you've heard how he made a blind man see,
how his snow-like touch sucked away any fevers. It's
true, he could hear the ebbing of sap in maples,
talk to it with his hands. I heard him whisper to the

rust under steel near the back door. He worked on
women who never had had an orgasm the way he wouldn't
give up on the ugliest, grungiest piece of wood or
wreckage half underwater in a basement of mold that he
kept at, hammering and rubbing, smoothing and scraping
and

banging and standing back and then going at it all again,
where an ordinary man would have given up, shrugged and
wiped his hands of it. He was not like anyone else
but seemed amazed at the wonders of the earth, at sky
flowers that bloom when night is on earth like a

woman arching and quivering, all in a burst, a burst of
sweet wetness and then how the day hid the stars, hid
my nipples and clit. It never ceased to amaze him, the
loveliness of life, the sowing of seeds, how the leaves
come back, like the blood in his penis, miraculous,

the proof of God

-- Review by Tony Moffeit