Miss Plastique was a finalist for the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Award in poetry.
Miss Plastique, the fourth full-length poetry collection by Lynn Levin, invites the reader into a world of female bravado in which Miss Plastique and her many selves rant, fret, joke, fall in love, dress up, and do their hair. Poems in this collection first appeared in Boulevard, Artful Dodge, Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, Knockout, Nerve Cowboy, and other places.
Lynn Levin, a poet known for her eclecticism, humor, and range of poetic styles, is the author of the previous poetry collections
Fair Creatures of an Hour, a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry;
Imaginarium, a finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award; and
A Few Questions about Paradise (all from Loonfeather Press). Her craft of poetry book,
Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (with Valerie Fox) was published by Texture Press in 2013. Lynn Levin is also a writer and literary translator. She has received nine Pushcart Prize nominations, two grants from the Leeway Foundation, and Garrison Keillor has read her work on his radio show
The Writer's Almanac. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Levin has lived in the Philadelphia area since 1980. She currently teaches at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Advance praise for Miss Plastique:
"Miss Plastique is a busy girl: giving it to her enemy in stiletto heels, giving it up to an Elvis impersonator, thumbing a ride across Texas. She has turned from the mirror and can't look back. She's sexy and seductive and refuses to be pinned down; she's silk so fluid you could drink her-read her instead, but watch she doesn't explode in your hands."
-Meg Kearney, author of Home By Now
"The poems in Lynn Levin's Miss Plastique hold their tension between fantasy and devastation."
-Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Necropolis
"This book is just as explosive as plastique and packed as tightly and with the impeccable craft you'd expect from a good detonation expert. Lynn Levin has the perfect timing and sensitive touch of one who works with volatile materials-an Elvis impersonator, the Beav and Eddie Haskell,Gaspara Stampa, Eve and Lilith at Macy's. We are better for the aftershocks of this verse."
-Christopher Bursk, author of The Improbable Swervings of Atoms
"As they say on Twitter...BOOM! Dazzling displays of craft abound as in the sonnets 'The Notebook' and 'People Can Get Used to Just about Anything,' and just-plain-beauties like 'The Language of Wildflowers.'"
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Levin writes with ferocious tenacity, all arterial memory, lust, found power, and raw regret like you imagine a Miss Plastique would be if she were real."
-- Cleaver
"In this accessible, outrageous, entertaining book, Lilith and Eve appear in funny, Rabelaisian poems that take place during shopping at the mall or strolls in the garden. Miss Plastique is fun, thought provoking, and paradoxical--an excellent read for anyone interested in the difficulties of existing as a modern and/or historical woman."
--Rain Taxi: Review of Books
"The poet's signature, razor-sharp wit and critical eye toward contemporary life give way to an underlying reverence for the tenderness and vulnerability of the human heart. Lynn Levin's poetry exhibits sophisticated craft and clear-eyed passion, yet never at the expense of hard truths and life's conundrums."
--Rattle
"Levin explores femininity and female bravado with characters who present themselves as bold, confident, and sexy."
-- Word Riot"
"Miss Plastique shows off Levin's intelligence and wit, cleverness and charm. These poems are full of parallels and paradoxes, mirrors and doors. Enough complexity and ambiguity to keep you returning and rereading."
--The Rumpus
"Recommend this book to your suburban mom (who may or may not have her own wild side). Hand it out to the hipsters in the coolest coffee shop in town. It's for your rock star boyfriend, your seventh-grade math teacher, and that friend of a friend who just sailed alone to Fiji. It's poetry for people who don't love poetry, and for people who love it too much, and for everyone in between."
-- Press 1
