Lyn Lifshin

Before it's Light Lyn Lifshin

Lyn Lifshin's is a reader's poetry immediate and accessible, seemingly artless, conveying complex, womanly truths with an everyday vocabulary. To describe it as a kind of feminine folk art is not to condescend; it is instead to recognize in it the naked power of a Bessie Smith blues lyric, the stirring eroticism of a burley-q fan dance, even, on occasion, the simple, balanced beauty of a Shaker quilt. Before It's Light is Lifshin's latest collection, and her largest and strongest to date.