Another Woman Who Looks Like Me

It is Lyn Lifshin's gift to seem perfectly artless, to make poems of immediacy and power from the humblest of near-to-hand materials. Her themes are the classic themes of lyric poetry—the innocence of childhood, the ecstasy of sex, the mystery of death—and her word choices are the poetic equivalents of the artist's circles, squares, and primary colors. Just as Alexander Calder could make a lion out of a coat hanger, Lyn Lifshin can make something memorable out of a handful of even the most familiar English words—mother, daughter, wind, moon, lover, horses, roses. Something memorable, something fresh and entirely her own.