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Ballroom
by Lyn Lifshin
Publisher: March Street Press
Paperback
286 pages
Price: $9.00
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1596611421
ISBN-13: 978-1596611429
Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
To Order:
Amazon


Reviews:

In Ballroom we have Lifshin at her absolutely most evocative, energetic, seductive. The whole book centers on “encounters,” guys and not gals plural, but Lifshin herself. Some negative encounters, but most of the time it’s a walloping WELCOME TO THE SEXUAL ENCOUNTER HERE AND NOW. As always tactile, visual, deep—psychological, perhaps Lifshin’s single most powerful book. They’re always powerful, but this one is screaming—not just for today’s reader, but down the road in time-travel classes about twenty-first century poetry that brings you irresistibly into the ecstatic,-squirming NOW.
—Hugh Fox

With Ballroom, my 30-year addiction to Lyn Lifshin is reaffirmed and continues, unabated. Each new Lifshin work unravels, ravels and reravels me, shocks me that I’m once again surprised at the author’s depth and range. Ballroom is an invitation to the dance of Mad Girls, lovers, obsession, self-doubt, growth, regressions, transgressions…so potent, sexual, and thought-provoking in ways only Lyn Lifshin can plumb. This book tantalizes, lets us find new sides of the author’s voice that have been living in the margins.
Ballroom inspires the same freshness and glistening in me as did the very first book of Lyn's I read those 3 decades ago. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Lyn. I love this book.
—Ted Roberts

In Lyn Lifshin's latest collection of discrete-yet-linked poems, dance becomes an exquisite metaphor for obsessive yearning and desire. Form and content complement each other perfectly: Lifshin's language is as graceful, physical, and organic as dance itself.
— Janice Eidus, author of The Last Jewish Virgin & The War of the Rosens

A FEAST of a book....a very excellent volume for veteran Lifshin readers and a wonderfully wide ranging book for those new to Ms. Lifshin's art. I have learned long ago that there is no single "best" work by Ms. Lifshin...she is provocative, prolific and among the very best of America's contemporary poets. This book puts an exclamation point on that opinion.
— Edward Roberts

From the Book:

The Chameleon
by Lyn Lifshin

Some days he’s the sheik, he’s
Valentino, slicked back hair
for a dangerous tango. A
day later it’s jeans, the bad
boy, the hipster. His sneer
pierces. His beard grows in
over night. Some days he’s
French, some days Italian.
He’s the sheik in more ways
than one. The heart breaker,
the Valentino. Tango with
him and he leaves a stain.
One day he’ll bring you
chocolate, another he’s in his
Fred Astaire hat, is the dance
away lover. Too many women
linger near his tent. Valentino
in a pale striped summer
suit, Valentino in the tuxedo.
The days he’s Viennese,
your feet won’t touch the
ground. He smells sweet as
he says you do. For beat or
hippy days, his sweat smells,
thrills some. If death gets
him young like Valentino,
the train with his gorgeous corpse
would stall traffic. Long haired
girls, blue as the silver bloom,
or the tart and sweet blueberry
will cry and no one no one will
know who he went out as

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