A New Film About a Woman in Love with the Dead

Lyn Lifshin

Lyn Lifhsin's poems are an almost unbearable compulsion. They are not always consistent, and they are not always perfect (as no poet's output ever is), but they are always readable, at the least.

A New Film About a Woman in Love with the Dead is the dissection of a long-ago relationship. An old lover has died, seemingly unexpectedly, and the speaker seems to have taken it worse than she had expected to. Still, all that aside, there's still the pithiness one expects from a well-turned Lifshin piece, the punning and asides coming off here as sardonic more than anything else.

I have often said that Lifshin's writing has improved as she's gotten older, and A New Film About a Woman in Love with the Dead is another piece of hard evidence to back that hypothesis up. This is fine stuff, and definitely deserves to be read by more folks than it has been up till now. If you've never been exposed to Lifshin, I suggest grabbing one of the recent Black Sparrow collections from your local library (Before It's Light is phenomenal), and, if you find it to your taste, hunting down a copy of this (available through both Amazon and directly from March Street); you'll not only be getting yourself a very good book, you'll also be supporting a small press who are in the midst of dire financial struggles. And that, too, would be a wonderful thing.