Ballroom by Lyn Lifshin

Ballroom

Lyn Lifshin

March Street Press

ISBN 1-59661-1421

2010.…$9.00



"it's like tuning into

distant stations. Or

an SOS alert, indelible

as lips or skin. Call

it ESP. If I didn't shudder,

your tango moving

toward me like a

brand, each place your

fingers touched,

indelible, a stain I

can't let fade"



Even the title is ambiguous. I suggest you do not "go into the night

lightly," Lifshin's poems dance us into/with a mad waltz, dipping and

the hesitation step the pauses ignite. Yes. I think of Bukowski, I also

think of Gertrude Stein and the women poets trying to partner, trying

to lead. But in actuality there is no one who writes like Lyn Lifshin.

Maybe a poet has written a few poems that have similar expressions

but there is no one who sustains, has the living focus or experiential

mood in varied effects within so many poems and each poem holds

the moment, provokes eternal, "…like a woman composing her self

like a licorice mare…" Our great grandchildren will be reading her

work. Lifshin parades her self in front of us and we can either except

or sit on the side lines while she dances without apology:



"TONIGHT

ON THE METRO

I FELT LIKE A NUN



they must imagine, I

mean even if they'll

never see what's

mysterious as the

mystical. Could

they not wonder

about that bracelet

of dark hair around

the bone. Or even

wonder about hair

around the other bone.

Even married to

Jesus wouldn't

they maybe even

dream what's under

some man's dark

jeans or cotton

as I can't help but

feel the outline

deep in tango,

so close bodies

move as one"



This book is a testament for and far more than any other woman

writer today she speaks, what we fantasize, think, how we feel,

especially, about freedom of expression without the vulgarities

of being specific:



"water pools in the

roses. My head's

under water in the

rouge blues. So

it's not raining

but it will be. This

blue Friday, a

roach I can't

escape without

a wall of them

burying me"



The first time I read Lyn's work, about five years ago, she sent a

packet of about fifty poems to the Wilderness House Literary Review,

as the poetry editor I was overwhelmed with her prolific writing, her

profound disregard for what anyone thought (?). I loved her poems

immediately. Even though I kept a tight boundary about submissions

and still do, I let Lifshin slid, knowing I might lose her if I didn't give

her free reign. There is no other way to read her work, be open and



allow yourself to be seduced:

"…Years from now,

when the hotel is plowed

under

and only pieces of stained

glass

drift up when a child

digs in clay. Or maybe

a ruined couch frame.

Or the glass or even

buttons from the coat

of the man who became

more and more confused,

wandered thru others'

bedrooms, dazed in

the lobby will float

past the cash register

and the eerie voice of

the buck-toothed

screeching guest will

echo up from earth,

cut night like an

ambulance siren."



The reader will never regret buying this 286 page book of poems

with a full orchestra playing in the background, twirling you

through the night. Bravo



"about to leap, bite

the neck of her prey,

put everything she has

into him. She is wild to

paralyze him, keep

him as her slave.

Don't call her Jezebel

or Medea, don't

look at her with a

sneer. She's been

waiting. his body a

taunt, a lure. It's

nature, it's not fair.

And even if she has

to die soon after,

she will have him

on the sheets

of paper"



Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor:

Wilderness Literary Review

Reviewer:

Ibbetson Street Press

Review of COWBOY WRITES A LETTER & OTHER LOVE POEMS, by Elizabeth P. Glixman

Review of COWBOY WRITES A LETTER & OTHER LOVE POEMS, by Elizabeth P. Glixman, 36 pages, Pudding House Chapbooks, 3252 Parklane Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43221, ISBN 1-58998-932-5, $10

Review by Barbara Bialick

In this chapbook, the author shows a developing talent in intriguing imagery, which at times seems a little too obscure. She shows the reader that marital bliss is not totally blissful, but at the same time she can laugh at her own part in that, as she does in the first poem, “Husbands, Wives and Chocolate.” How could a chocolate addict hiding in the basement eating the ears of six chocolate bunnies have married a dentist! “In the pre-nuptial I agreed not to eat candy—I agreed that all that would/be sweet in my life would be him…”

The fun gets heavier as she moves the reader along. In “The Dividing Line” she’s with her husband in their bedroom, “When you spoke in Zeus like tones/If we had children I would devour them/Do away with irreverent reminders…”

But she shows she really gets something about marriage and motherhood, when she writes of herself as a blue baby born to her mother Bessie in “Bessie’s Blue Baby”: “Bessie promised everyone/I would grow to be a real beauty/even though I was blue/awkward entering life early/before my nine month trip was done./The family believed Bessie’s omniscience./She was the goddess of the house/the mother of all grandmothers/who said no before you asked a question/You wore your underwear on your head/if she said boo…I am perfect my hair is blonde/and my voice is lady like/as quiet as a lie.”

Elizabeth P. Glixman has a BFA in Studio Arts and an M.Ed in elementary education from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. This is her second chapbook from Pudding House. The first was “A White Girl Lynching” in 2008.

Check out her blog at http://elizabeth-in the moment.blogspot.com/

"Pushcarts and Peddlers." by Ed Galing

Well, my old friend Ed Galing, 94, will have a new book of poetry coming out hopefully early this year "Pushcarts and Peddlers." (Poetica Publishing Company) It is a collection of Ed Galing's Jewish themed poetry. Now I have kept in touch with Ed mostly by phone for over a decade and even started a blog for him http://edgaling.blogspot.com. Ed writes about his days in the earlier part of last century on the teeming streets of the Lower East Side of New York City. The title of the collection " Pushcarts and Peddler" reminds me of my own family, in particular my late uncle Dave Kirschenbaum. Dave started selling books on pushcarts on the Lower East Side, and eventually owned a couple of bookstores on New York's famed Book Row, including the noted " Carnegie Bookstore." Ed Galing is one of the few poets around--may I say the few people around, who remembers those days.



I became fascinated with Ed after completing my thesis on Henry Roth while studying with the noted Yiddish Literature scholar Ruth Wisse at Harvard University. Like Galing, Roth wrote about his coming of age on the Lower East Side, in his acclaimed novel " Call it Sleep." In a way Galing is my living link to Roth. My late father Lawrence Holder, (Formerly Horowitz) like Galing, was born in New York (The Bronx)in 1917. He told me many stories about his street urchin days as a Jewish boy-- stealing potatoes from carts and roasting them in back alleys, his parents who were immigrants from Russia, the food, the eccentric uncles, actually seeing Babe Ruth as a young boy at Yankee Stadium, the Vaudeville songs, the Marx Brothers, the ice man--you name it. Ed connects me to him as well.



The following is from the Poetica website, about Galing and his forthcoming book.




Puschcarts and Peddlers
Selected Poems by Ed Galing



Cover Art Created and Donated
by Eugene Ivanov



Ed Galing is an award-winning ninety-three year old poet, cartoonist, and journalist. He received many literary awards, two pushcart nominations, wrote over seventy chapbooks, and was the harmonica-playing poet-laureate of Hatboro, Pennsylvania. Galing grew up in a tenement building in the Lower East Side of New York, learning about pushcarts, peddlers and bustling immigrants. When he was nine-years old his parents moved to Philadelphia where he finished his high school education, then he began to write short stories, poems, and sketches about his life. Shortly after WWII, Galing joined the Army and served as an occupation soldier in Europe, where he witnessed the death camps in Dachau. Galing married at age twenty-one and lived with his wife Esther for sixty-eight years, until her death. Galing is described by Doug Holder as a "poet of the greatest generation." Mr. Galing does not own a computer, he still communicates with editors and fellow poets by hand written letters. Mr. Galing lives at his home in Hatboro, PA, confined to a wheelchair, and as always, types all his poems using an old typewriter. His greatest wish is to see his Jewish works published and recognized, that those days of experiencing the Lower East Side, Dachau, anti-Semitism in the Army and Navy will never be forgotten.

Poetica Magazine and Poetica Publishing Company will grant Mr. Galing his wish and will publish a full collection of his Jewish poems. Pushcarts and Peddlers by Ed Galing will be published as soon as we can find and collect his Jewish theme poems…this is a challenge.

Leo Racicot: A friend to Julia Child and M.F. K. Fisher

( Leo Racicot with his sister Diane--engaged in one of his favorite activities in NYC)



Leo Racicot is a Lowell, Mass. Native, but has spent much time in Somerville, Mass. For awhile he worked at The Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, and crossed over to our burg from the Republic of Cambridge quite often to live his life. Like Jack Kerouac, another Lowell native son, Racicot writes poetry that is spiritual, with ample doses of Catholicism and Eastern Religion. Racicot, a food writer, poet, and movie critic, among other things was befriended by noted food writers Julia Child and M.F.K. Fisher and has many anecdotes about these epicurean icons, and other personages he has come across in his rich life and his eating of rich food. His latest book of poetry is " Alone in the Yard: Buddhist, Beat and Otherwise." (Big Table Press)




Doug Holder: You were friends with famed food writer M.F.K. Fisher and Julia Child.

Were Child and Fisher close? Did they have different perspectives on cooking?


Leo Racicot: I can never say enough good things about Mary Frances and Julia. Their presence in my life altered it in ways that came as a complete surprise to me. Here were two food icons who embraced a person who knew nothing about food except how to eat it. Life works backwards sometimes and their friendship came to me way before my ability to cook came to me. I still marvel at the dynamic. They were close friends, knew each other in France and Julia would often visit Mary Frances in Glen Ellen. Both had a marvelous mind, fertile, and always probing, and engaging as hell. They both steered away from shop talk; it was actually not easy getting them to talk about food. Julia loved long discourses on politics and international affairs (she hadserved in the OSS), the state of education, fashion, the environment. She loved to gossip and was not above breaking wind, regardless of where. I used to get a kick out of that. She also had the most peculiar habit of throwing things on the
floor (newspapers and magazines, napkins, table crumbs) after she was finished with them. She was made for television, a real comedienne in a league, I think, with Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett. Mary Frances had a keen wit, too, but she did not go in for t.v. exposure, though she had been given many chances at it. She was more subdued, less a performer than Julia. She introduced me to a world I never thought I would know and people like James Baldwin, Isaac Stern, Molly O'Neill, James Beard, Rosemary Manell, Vincent Price and of course, Julia.

I miss them both terribly. They changed my Life.



DH: I find food very evocative and worthy of scholarly attention. I wrote my thesis at Harvard on food in Henry Roth's fiction, and we all know about Proust's little cake. Does food play a role in your own work?


LR: Your thesis is a marvel of craftsmanship and research and I had such a good time reading it! Food plays less of a role in my poems than it does in my non-fiction. I agree with you 100% that it is an amazing and important metaphor for more universal topics such as health, comfort, love. I LOVE to eat. Some people can take food or leave it. But I live to eat. And my weight is proof! Yikes! The doctor just told me that in three years, I have gained 40 lbs. Can you say "Macy's Parade helium balloon"? JOKE. LAFF.


DH: You contemplated being a priest, but you felt spiritually bankrupt with your experience with the church. What happened? You found poetry as a sort of spiritual elixir. Explain.

LR: I was raised strict Catholic, by nuns and priests, and fell hook,line and sinker for the whole shtick. I was just the other night watching again "The Sound of Music" and it struck me how very different my spiritual beliefs are now compared to how they were when I was a "good, little Catholic boy" and worshiped the church and all its teachings. I used to say Mass in my room using a cup, a tissue for the burse, a blanket for the chasuble. My faith was strong. But when some very serious crises hit, and I turned to the church for help, guidance, trust, it (they) let me down hard.I woke up. Through friendships with Allen Ginsberg at that time,and other Beat writers, also through exposure to other religions, I was opened up to more spiritual ways of thinking and being. I think God wants spiritual fruits, not religious nuts. I changed. And I am glad I did.

DH:Big Table Publishing published your poetry book; " Alone in the Open: Buddhist, Beat and Otherwise"-- tell us a bit about the collection.


LR:I wanted to fashion a group of poems that speak to the universal question, "What do you do when confronted with loss, pain, disappointment, tragedy?" Events we all experience. In using language to heal myself, I am told I found a way to heal others.

People who read the book tell me they have gained insight and hope from it for themselves. The poems incorporate Catholic, Buddhist, Judaic and Muslim concepts but their satisfaction lies beyond all of that. The work does seem to be coming from somewhere outside of me. My dreams are filled with poems, fully realized. I feel I am a pen and The Divine is the writer. I do pray a lot. I try to practice gratefulness. Life can be hard. But it is much harder if you don't believe in something, even if it is not a traditional form of worship.Writing is my religion. Writing is what has saved me from myself and my demons.



DH: You write movie reviews for the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, Cambridge. I of course loved Pauline Kael's interviews--what makes for a good movie review?I LOVED Kael, too, and wish we would hear more about heroine this post-Kael age. Who is writing good reviews nowadays?


LR: Can you think of anyone? I said previously that writing has saved me but an equal thanks has to go to movies. If it weren't for movies, I don't think I could live. No hyperbole! My sister,

Diane, estimates I have seen at least 2000 movies in the last couple of years. I think you have to love the art of films in order to write a good review. You have to be able to watch recognized masterpieces but you have to love celluloid so much, you can also sit through something like "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" and enjoy it for what it is -- which is garbage but someone thought enough of it to make it so it deserves to be watched, too! My favorite reviews are of movies where the dialogue is perfect or near-perfect: movies like "The Philadelphia Story" or "Wonder Boys" or "All About Eve" or "Amadeus" or "Julia" where not one line rings false. Those reviews are easiest for me to write because as a writer, my ear is overjoyed.

For me, movies are as aural as they are visual. I have to hear the director's intent. A movie has to sing!