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Electric Rose by Christopher Clements
"Electric Rose" copyright by Christopher Clements

In a Green Shade

A poem by Lyn Lifshin

"The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth open to everything until he has what he needs."
                        ~ Romare Beardan

The artist is like
what is singing under
the waves of green.
Green wind, green
petals, green all light
grows greener in.
A jewel box of color,
the reddest birds in
dripping catalpa
and roses. Dream
frogs, iridescent
insects, a pipe organ
under leaves where
you can only imagine,
underwater balloons
you can stretch the
necks of taut, play in
day dreams that take
you on a journey
long as the sea is

Copyright Lyn Lifshin

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Lyn Lifshin

Lyn Lifshin, whose book Before It's Light won the Paterson Poetry Award, has written more than 100 books and edited four anthologies of women writers. Her most recent collection is The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian (Texas Review Press, 2005). Godine will publish Another Woman Who Looks Like Me in April 2006. A new collection, Persephone, will be published by Red Hen Press.

Ms. Lifshin's poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the United States, and she has won many awards. She has also taught poetry and prose writing for many years at universities, colleges, and high schools, and has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. She is working on a collection about poets, Poets, (Mostly) Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially the Lies. For more information, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of her work, and more, browse her website: www.lynlifshin.com.

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