The Light at the End by Lyn Lifshin

Light at the End
The Jesus Poems
Lyn Lifshin
Clevis Hook Press 2008
ISBN 978-9821718-0-6
$12.95

Review by Irene Koronas

wow. this book of poems took me by surprise. I read through a few times before I let go of my own attitude of what was being written, once I let go did I found a sardonic collection of situations, a continual jab at the preverbal relationships women and men sometimes have. Lifshin cuts open all the wounds and images of how the sexes may act on occasion. there are, the younger than mary episodes, jesus running buck shot over innocence and innocence growing bitter. jesus represents some men:

“…some how there’d always been some
woman who found him divine
I did, for longer than many
marriages last. when opened
to him, the most ordinary
days seemed magical. blood
on our shin…”

there is enough irreverence between these sheets, pages, to feed all the readers who enjoy punk rock or hippie flowers. if the poems were set to music people might throw themselves into or onto the audience with reassurance of being caught, carried up and out:

“…me bareback, our lips and kisses reins
‘I’ve touched your perfect body,’ he sang better
than Leonard Cohen himself and in his passion,
yelped yippy I o and I squealed oh Jesus
and Christ and Lord until I was hoarse.”

it takes a few readings for me to place jesus as a Spanish lover or all the lovers or all the men the author can conjure but when I place the poems in perspective I start to laugh.

the poems are clever, interesting, and not charming. Lifshin ‘pulls off’ another book of difference. the reader will ride a stormy night or a bright blinding morning after…:

“I don’t care if it rains or freezes
as long as I’ve got my plastic Jesus”

he has risen to
walk-where the
hell has he been,
what’s happened,
our nation has turned
its back on Jesus
lost its way
sideshow suckers,
heathens killing
babies, presidents
with their pants
around their ankles
I’m on the road
that leads to Jesus
send 50 dollars to
my 800 number and
get yourself a
good road map

poet preacher Lifshin, like a sharp shooter who can hit a nickel dead center from 10 miles away, nails it


Irene Koronas/ Ibbetson Update/ Jan 2009

92 Rapple Drive by Lyn Lifshin

92 Rapple Drive
Lyn Lifshin
Coatlism Press 2008
15.95 ISBN 13: 978-0-9802073-1-6
ISBN 10: 0-9802073-1-2
http://www.coatlism.blogspot.com

the font used for titling the poems is distraction;
too emphatic for this reader, especially, in the
morning before my coffee kools. I proceed anyway to
the poems which run into each other or so it seems,
“imagined I couldn’t go on without her.” “here, with
the cat on my feet…” “was it the black starless
nights,.” Lyn Lifshin’s 92 Rapple poems are rooted,
they grow from rich soil fed and turned regularly.
what surprises me is the poems are not about trees or
those flowery blouses dotted with pink and lilac.
instead Lifshin plants memory and the moment opens; we
meet the unabashed poems’ presence, in the presence of
their unfolded. “but I was fire, i was adrenalin,
flame. I wanted the white wind…” and as the reader
thumbs thru, turns pages, we harvest her white, we
breath in and exhale slowly in front of, before her
verse, before we are allowed entrance, “the key
gulped by crows,” the reader needs to retrieve, settle
into, an often “cranky.” Lifshin lets us walk thru
concrete passage ways, the subtle play between
couplets. those who have read her work before, you’ll
find the same genuine voice, that pause encounter,
"remember stories of panthers,” pawed rows and rows,
spooning words as ordinary, the extrodinary lift, the
fresh break or corner of shade.

I don’t want to talk
of the other I passed
in the hall, you know
that story tho it was
not quite that, was
tea in bed and then I
wrote in the kitchen.
what was new
would be stained.
what wasn’t, lost
its sheen. days a
scrim I saw only
what I made up thru,
the moon pink and
if there was a pond,
a deep rose thru the
sand that let go of
everything too

Irene Koronas
Ibbetson Street Press (reviewer)
Poetry Editor
Wilderness House Litery Review
www.whlreview.com