MISS PLASTIQUE
Because it should be handled
with care and can explode
at any moment, it is like me.
Picture a gob of it molded
into the Three Graces –
Shock, Orgasm, and Wrath.
Watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
I thrilled to see Illya Kurakin
pack plastique into a keyhole
then coolly turn as it blew
open a door. Imagine!
Something that looks like dough
can kill you. I love the stuff
with a self-love
I never knew I had.
More than my stiletto
heels, Garbo hat, or lipsticks.
I want to wrap some up like bubble gum
and give it to my enemy.
Here. Take me into your mouth. Taste me.
I attended a poetry reading last night at the public library in Warminster, PA, and heard Lynn Levin read from her recent collection of poems, Miss Plastique. As Levin talked candidly about her work, she mentioned the persona running throughout the collection. Levin describes her as one who is sometimes young, sometimes old, having a series of family or relationship problems – and amidst it all doing her hair or checking her make-up. This persona is edgy. She is flawed. She is self-aware. As I listened to Levin read, I couldn’t stop thinking about the similarity of the words, “dynamic” and “dynamite,” each having a changeable if not unstable quality to them, and, yet, like the greek term, “dynamus,” also mean power.
It is this undercurrent of power – the raw sharpness of the speaker – that has drawn me in since my initial reading of the collection. Miss Plastique herself is at times empowered, at times uneasy or wanting. She tells some stories that are sexy, some shocking. The craft of the poems assure that the speaker speaks with truth. Levin’s reading of the selected poems reaffirmed this for me, her poems resounding with integrity and passion. Each reveal its own nuance and perspective. What resulted from hearing these poems – an established knowing tone that couldn’t be farther from the front cover’s image, an image which sports a Barbie-like plastic doll posed with an eternal smile. The poem, “Miss Plastique” from which the collection’s title is taken, sizzles. The rest of the collection brings it on in equal measure.
Miss Plastique has been reviewed by many, including The Rumpus.net.
Lynn Levine is a poet, writer and translator. She teaches at Drexel University and The University of Pennsylvania. Read more about Lynn Levin at http://www.lynnlevinpoet.com/books/
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://minotaursspotlight.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Elise-Photo1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Elise Brand is a poet and teacher from Montgomery County, PA, earning her MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University in 2014. Her work has appeared in Adanna Literary Journal, The Broadkill Review, The North Penn Reporter, and Mousetales Press. She views art and its making as gifts with which to be generous – the connection between artist and audience a sacred thing. She enjoys travel and cooking, bicycling and refurbishing old furniture. She lives in Lansdale with her husband, a history professor, who shares her of love of vintage records and the resurgence of vinyl. (Records, that is. Vinyl in other instances may be questionable.)[/author_info] [/author]
