Kimberly Lyons

People talk about Kimberly Lyons the way they used to talk about Laura Nyro and Patti Smith, as though you have to be from New York to fully appreciate their work, the anarchic spirit, the wistful tender underbelly, the endless search for perfection in life and love. Like Bette Davis in "A Stolen Life", Lyons' poetry wears two faces, first the microfocus on the intimate details of a woman's daily life, and secondly the humming supersonic whistle of metropolitan Rosetta wailing wall, the 200 languages you hear on the midtown bus. Formerly the director of the Poetry Project at St. Marks in New York, Kimberly Lyons is the author of Promises (1996), Mettle (artist's book, with Ed Eppling), and Abracadabra (Granary,1999).
May 18, 2001

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