A White Girl Lynching by Elizabeth P. Glixman

Pudding House Publications, 2008
Review by Kimberly L. Becker

Color Theory

Elizabeth P. Glixman is a poet and writer, as well as interview editor at Eclectica. Her work appears in many journals and anthologies, including Frigg, The Pedestal, Wicked Alice, and Women of the Web: A Poetry Anthology. An animal lover, she also has a blog devoted to shelter animals. In addition, she is a visual artist (B.F.A. in Studio Arts and M.Ed. from Clark University) and the poems in her chapbook, A White Girl Lynching, reflect this artistic sensibility.

A carefully selected frame both highlights and protects the artwork within. Glixman frames her book with an author’s statement: “These poems are…about respect for all individuals and races…many of the poems [are] about what happens to people when they are ‘lynched.’ I interpret lynched as meaning to have an important element of individual dignity taken away from an individual or group.” Glixman takes a risk in dissociating lynching from its historical context and connotation. With her statement, she wisely protects her title’s integrity of intent. Without it, the title itself would run the risk of seeming to disrespect African American victims of literal lynching. By highlighting her definition of “lynching” that occurs across color lines, Glixman frees the reader to appreciate more fully the artistry of her poems.

Accompanying each Pudding House chapbook is a Position Statement on the Value of Poetry Arts that reads in part: “You selected language art that took as long to create as paintings or other fine art.” This statement is especially fitting for Glixman, whose own artwork graces the cover and whose poems are informed by her training as a visual artist. “Painted Stories from the Dutch,” an ekphrastic poem in eight parts, draws inspiration from Rembrandt, Vermeer and other masters from the Golden Age of Dutch painting, according to her blog,(italics)In the Moment(/italics), in which she also notes that quality of light and details of texture characterize this period. (Given the title and theme of the book, the fruit and hanging, bloodied rabbits depicted in this poetic still-life cannot help but recall more sinister “Strange Fruit.”)

The white girl of the title, who suffers a vicious beating, “covered her black blue / fruity bruises with pancake makeup.” The heavy application of cosmetics recalls the artistic technique of impasto, which Glixman also alludes to in the stunning line: “Dance with me in darkness and light / In the thick impasto of secret lust.” Glixman applies the principle of chiaroscuro to the light and dark side of racial relations. Her poems emphasize the danger of being “pulled into one point perspective” when it comes to viewing others. Despite the violence of “The Modern Annihilation” Glixman seeks connection: an executed son of a friend is “still in the arch of all things.” Further, “the path of all things is a miniature painting / Luminescent and telling.”

Glixman mixes colorful characters (a hallelujah-shouting Momma, a cat named Rabbi Simon, a Manoschevitz-toting Eve) to test her theory that it is not race or even species that divides us, but lack of compassion: “Who knows who is who in this world of sorrow?” Glixman paints an answer at once anguished and hopeful: “We cry and wonder, for the confusion of lost things / and arrive in a space of astonishment.”