Femme Eterna by Lyn Lifshin
Published by Glass Lyre
Press
Review by April Salzano
Born
of a collaboration that unfortunately never came to fruition between Lifshin
and Russian painter Luba Serlikova, Femme
Eterna examines historical women, Enheduanna, Scheherazade, and Nefertiti,
to provide what becomes an ambitious speculation on the women’s innermost
thoughts, as well as a comment on their collective and individual impact on
feminism and writing. From an intrigued, and at times obsessive,
perspective, Lifshin contemplates each of her subjects with a voice as bold and
feminist as the voice she projects onto each woman. Reader-accessibility and
understanding is of utmost importance to the poet in this work, as in all of
her work, and each woman is examined fully and with Lifshin’s usual
unapologetic questioning and fearless explanation in place of esoteric
allusion. Also typical of the poet’s previous collections, each poem could
easily stand alone, displaying no dependence on the others in the collection.
Many are even titled the same, simply with each woman’s name, and include all information
necessary for any reader to fully appreciate the subject. It is this very
accessibility that allows the reader to become part of this world, to “smell
the saffron, feel the hot dust near the pyramids,” just as Lifshin promises in
the introduction. As much as she allows us to become immersed in this ancient
world, Lifshin still keeps us tethered to the here and now with her signature
vernacular, which forms a stark contrast to the world it describes: “Birds
no/one now living can/see dart thru brambles,” she writes in “In a Breeze of
Dates And Olives, 4000 Years BC”. Just as we forget we were reading ink on
paper rather than cuneiform on lapis lazuli tablet, we are reminded by the poet
with such an abbreviation or a reference to the difference between that time
and our own, which one of the work’s key themes.
At
times, the writer adopts the persona of her gorgeous, powerful subject, while
in other poems she remains an external voice and outside observer, allowing
herself to become a character in this history. Only once the image is fully
created does Lifshin interject, always returning us to the vision of a young
passionate woman on the banks of the Tigris, weaving words and history into a
beautiful braid, giving “birth to what/explodes from/her heart,” as in the
poem, “Between the Euphrates and the Tigris.”
The
first section is as much a tribute to Enheduanna as Enheduanna’s to the goddess
Inanna, a contribution to the very immortalization of which she stands in awe. Here is a woman, 6000 years before us, that we
as readers can associate with, that through “rage and pain” is asking: “Can you
still be/a poet-priestess/when your skin/wants a flesh man?” (“Some Days Her
Heart Feels No Relief”). Is art alone enough to sustain us? This is one of the
many questions of poet, reader, as much as it is of Enheduanna herself. The relationship between art and life is an
essential one to explore as is the nature of language, simultaneously fragile
and permanent: “She can’t let/the day go, she/is obsessed,//she is carrying/the
embryo of a/poem in her fingers.” Enheduanna shows us the restlessness Lifshin
colors her with, a young writing because she has to, often showing little
control over the act of creating art. With or without her consent, Enheduanna
creates, each poem becomes a divine act, “each shape/glowing with the/ambiguity
poetry/demands,” as in the poem “When She Pressed Her Web-Shaped Reed into Soft
Clay.”
Much
like Enheduanna, Scheherazade is alive and well in this collection, despite the
nightly danger she faced at the hands of the Sultan if she was unable to
entertain him with her stories. Lifshin tells us in her introduction that this
is a woman “easy to identify with,” which one finds to be, however
unfortunately, a profoundly true statement. At the beginning of this section,
Lifshin sets up the notion of sexuality coming second in importance to artistic
importance, the latter a more difficult test to cheat on, and a task that
cannot be faked. In the third poem in this section, “Scheherazade,” our subject
is clad in blue, “not the wild bullfight flame/color that drives men wild/as
the story goes,/but calm.” Importance and focus is placed on her word, not her
physical form. The hypnotized husband
becomes the “you” in most of this section, forcing the reader to identify with
him, to become as taken with the speaker as we are the author, both performing
the same task, luring us with their imaginations, one through the other. “Each
tale,” she tells us “like the third person/in this ménage à /trois where words
tempt/more than bodies,” as she shows in “How Could Her Palms Not Be Wet?” She
offers the scenario of man, woman, and story locked in an intimate triste. The
reader becomes the fourth member, breath held, a fearful voyeur who cannot turn
away. The speaker’s ongoing plots become a “strip tease,” each night only a
shred of clothing removed as a new plot unravels in the ongoing effort to stay
alive. We get the sense that the imminent danger adds adrenaline we presume is
needed to do what she has to do to stay alive. Lifshin interestingly equates
Scheherazade to Rapunzel in “ Each Night She is Like A Drowning Nymph,” with
her words as her rope, both women sacrificing themselves to escape their fate.
Lifshin
saves the best for last, paying tribute to the mystery and beauty of Nefertiti
through poems as sensual and strong as the woman herself. Speculating on the
many theories about the woman’s life and death, Lifshin paints the third portrait
in her collection, this one maintaining the state of the “perpetual arousal” Lifshin
warns us of in the section’s introduction. We are also shown a deep admiration,
as the author conjures ideas of what Nefertiti may have thought and felt during
all phases of her life, as woman, mother, as goddess and king, multifaceted
“like a flower/that keeps unfolding,” but, as time has shown, nowhere near as
fragile or ephemeral, as she shows us in “Hours Posing for the Sculpture.”
Nefertiti’s beauty and power has lasted beyond what she could have imagined,
though Lifshin certainly instills in her version of this mythical creature a
kind of prescience rivaled only by her sex appeal. “[H]er skin can barely/keep
her inside,” we see as the young woman poses for the sculptor who will
immortalize her, a knowledge of her own beauty, which seems to feed itself
infinitely.
Maybe
due to the accessibility of the work, to the balance of speculation and fact,
or perhaps because of the ease with which the poet navigates her subject, this
collection comes to a close before we are ready to let go, leaving us sitting
in the sun on the banks of the Nile, thinking of these three beauties, each a
petal of that forever-unfolding flower, wondering why we haven’t read more
poetry about them. Ultimately, the collection as whole educates as much as it
admires, and the subject matter is presented with equal parts knowledge and
grace.