Lyn Coffin
Encyclopedia
Lyn Coffin is an American poet, fiction writer, playwright, editor, and translator.
, New York
. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan
in 1965. She holds Master's degrees in English, TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), and Social Work. She developed a doctoral thesis on the poet Radcliffe Squires but never defended it to receive her Ph.D. She has an honorary doctorate from the World Academy of Arts and Culture (UNICEF).
While a student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she won Major and Minor Hopwood Award
s in every category. She was later Associate Editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review
and taught English at the University of Michigan.
Coffin is the author of nine books: two of poetry, one of poetry/fiction/drama, and six of translation. She has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in over fifty quarterlies and small magazines, including Catholic Digest
and Time magazine. Her plays have been performed at theaters in Malaysia, Singapore, Boston, New York (Off Off Broadway), Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Seattle. She has given poetry readings with Nobel Prize
winners Joseph Brodsky
and Czesław Miłosz, and Philip Levine
, among others. She is a member of Washington Poets' Association, PoetsWest, Seattle Playwrights' Studio, and Dramatists' Guild.
Coffin currently resides in Seattle.
Coffin also translated and adapted Milan Uhde
's play Ave Maria, Played Softly for the stage.
Coffin is a versatile writer, drawing on multiple genres, and has been recognized for the wide diversity of her works. Her pieces tend to be short; many of the plays are one act in length, and Coffin has written flash fiction
and haiku
. She clearly enjoys playing with structure—she has written sonnets, acrostics, sestinas, and villanelles--as well as language; her pieces are filled with puns, "one-liners", and a multiplicity of metaphors. Here, Goldstein calls attention to her notable wordsmithing:
Coffin's writing is sprinkled with literary allusions (the result no doubt of her graduate education and a career spent teaching English). She has said that she "love[s] to muck around in the loam of language" and that she sometimes prefers to begin with "the 'edges' of a poem fixed" by confining herself to a particular form.
Coffin's work contains intimate (and sometimes uncomfortable) revelations and is chiefly focused on inward perception and self-exploration—if not of the author herself, certainly of her characters. Literary influences would include Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, but also the confessional poets such as Anne Sexton. Coffin's pieces are frequently autobiographical, drawing on personal experience. In a review for the back of Crystals, Alice Fulton
calls attention to "the veracity with which [Coffin] pursues her demons and delights."
The recurring themes to be found in Coffin's writing of death, sex, and mental illness are also typical of the confessional school. For example, in "Me and Me", Coffin describes a suicide:
Coffin's pieces contain many dark notes. Pain is often paradoxically mixed with humor or conveyed in a sing-songy, deceptively childlike voice that is reminiscent of Sylvia Plath. In "Amelia Mealy Mouth", Coffin writes:
The images and tone of voice in Coffin's poem "Zombie" are also Plathlike:
Goldstein writes that Coffin "reads the tradition as one that virtually excludes a woman writer like herself... the situation of the woman writer... is something like the position of women in [her] poems and stories... it is precarious, contingent, often dependent on men for favors." Coffin usually portrays events and people from a woman's perspective, and her work has been featured in an anthology of women's voices.
There is less emphasis placed on plot in Coffin's writing; or, rather, the plot is principally psychological and verbal. There are rarely more than two (central) characters in her poems, stories, and plays, and most of these are driven by interior monologues and searching dialogue or witty banter rather than physical action.
Biography
Coffin was born on Long IslandLong Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in 1965. She holds Master's degrees in English, TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), and Social Work. She developed a doctoral thesis on the poet Radcliffe Squires but never defended it to receive her Ph.D. She has an honorary doctorate from the World Academy of Arts and Culture (UNICEF).
While a student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she won Major and Minor Hopwood Award
Hopwood Award
The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist and member of the Class of 1905 of The University of Michigan, one-fifth of Mr. Hopwood's estate was given to the...
s in every category. She was later Associate Editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review
Michigan Quarterly Review
The Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...
and taught English at the University of Michigan.
Coffin is the author of nine books: two of poetry, one of poetry/fiction/drama, and six of translation. She has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in over fifty quarterlies and small magazines, including Catholic Digest
Catholic Digest
Catholic Digest is an American Roman Catholic monthly magazine.It was founded in 1936 and today circulation totals 300,000.In December 2001, the French Roman Catholic media group Bayard Presse purchased the magazine from University of St. Thomas...
and Time magazine. Her plays have been performed at theaters in Malaysia, Singapore, Boston, New York (Off Off Broadway), Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Seattle. She has given poetry readings with Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
winners Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...
and Czesław Miłosz, and Philip Levine
Philip Levine (poet)
Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well...
, among others. She is a member of Washington Poets' Association, PoetsWest, Seattle Playwrights' Studio, and Dramatists' Guild.
Coffin currently resides in Seattle.
Books
- Human Trappings, Abattoir Editions (1980)
- Elegies by Jiří OrtenJirí OrtenJiří Orten was a Czech poet. His work was influenced by surrealism and folklore. His first book of poems, Čítanka jaro , came out in 1939. He spent time in Paris, but ultimately returned to Prague...
, CVU Press, (1981). Translation from Czech. - The Plague Column by Jaroslav SeifertJaroslav SeifertJaroslav Seifert was a Nobel Prize winning Czech writer, poet and journalist.Born in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, his first collection of poems was published in 1921...
, CVU Press (1981). Translation from Czech used by the Nobel CommitteeNobel CommitteeA Nobel Committee is the working body responsible for the most of the work involved in selecting Nobel Prize laureates. There are five Nobel Committees, one for each Nobel Prize....
in granting Seifert his prize. - The Poetry of Wickedness, Ithaca House (1982)
- Poems of Akhmatova, W.W. Norton (1983). Translation from Russian. Reviewed in The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
. - Crystals of the Unforeseen, Plain View Press (1999)
- More than One Life, by Miloslava Holubova, Northwestern University Press (2000). Translation from Czech, with Alex ZuckerAlex ZuckerAlex Zucker is an American literary translator.-Life and career:Zucker was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. From ages 4 to 17, he lived in East Lansing, Michigan. He attended college at UMass Amherst, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Zoology in 1986...
and Zdenka Brodska, a Professor at the University of Michigan. - Islands in the Stream of Time, by Germain Droogenbroodt, (2008). Translation from Dutch, with the collaboration of the author.
- White Picture," by Jiri Orten (2011). Translation from the Czech, with Eva Eckert, Zdenka Brodska, Leda Pugh.
Short stories
- "The Second Page", Catholic DigestCatholic DigestCatholic Digest is an American Roman Catholic monthly magazine.It was founded in 1936 and today circulation totals 300,000.In December 2001, the French Roman Catholic media group Bayard Presse purchased the magazine from University of St. Thomas...
, 1968. - "Falling Off the Scaffold", Michigan Quarterly ReviewMichigan Quarterly ReviewThe Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...
, 1978. Reprinted in Best American Short StoriesBest American Short StoriesThe Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American literature.-Edward O'Brien:The...
of 1979 (ed. Joyce Carol Oates). - "Lesson in Black and White", Ball State Forum, Winter 1981
- "Front Towards Enemy", Michigan Quarterly ReviewMichigan Quarterly ReviewThe Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...
, Winter 1981 - "The Auction", Golden Handcuffs Review, 2004
Individual Poetry Publications
- "Five Poems", Aspen Leaves, Spring 1973
- "To You Again", Michigan Quarterly ReviewMichigan Quarterly ReviewThe Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...
, Fall 1973 - "To Yevtushenko, Name Enough", New Orleans Review, Spring 1974
- "The Death of Allen Ginsberg", Aspen Anthology, Winter 1976
- "Salmon", New Orleans Review, Spring 1976
- "Before This Was a Jungle", National College Poetry Review, Spring 1979; reprinted in Pegasus, Fall 1979
- "The Plane and the Watcher", Iowa Review, Fall 1979
- "Bank of America", Andover Review, Fall 1979.
- "A Little Girl's Drawing", Michigan Quarterly ReviewMichigan Quarterly ReviewThe Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...
, Fall 1979 - "Four Poems", The Great Writers, University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, Summer 1979 - "The Blackbird Looks Back", and "Cow, Drowning in Mud", Bits, 1980
- "The Dream", Poetry Now, 1980
- "Inheritance", Dakotah Territory, 1980
- "Motel Aubade", Concerning Poetry, 1980
- "Retail Outlets" and "Orpheus", Descant, 1980
- "Genealogical Allegory", Poet Lore, Spring 1980
- "Three Poems", Descant, Spring Summer 1980
- "Initiation", Southern Humanities ReviewSouthern humanities reviewThe Southern Humanities Review is a quarterly literary journal published by Auburn University . The current editors are Dan Latimer and Chantel Acevedo. It publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, and book reviews on the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, and history...
, Summer 1980 - "Elegy #3" by Jiri Orten, TLS, International Poetry Review, Spring 1980
- "The Thassos Kouros", Southern Humanities ReviewSouthern humanities reviewThe Southern Humanities Review is a quarterly literary journal published by Auburn University . The current editors are Dan Latimer and Chantel Acevedo. It publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, and book reviews on the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, and history...
, Fall 1980 - "A Statue of the Sacred Heart", Wind, 1980
- "Oedipus and the Sphinx", Michigan Quarterly ReviewMichigan Quarterly ReviewThe Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...
, Summer 1980 - "Orton's Elegy No. 7", tr., Denver QuarterlyDenver QuarterlyThe Denver Quarterly is a literary journal based at the University of Denver. Founded in 1966 by novelist John Williams.-Best American Short Stories:...
, Spring 1980 - "Crossing the Bridge", Kansas Quarterly, Fall 1980
- "Force of One", Hollins Critic, October 1980
- "The Affair is Over" and "You're Odysseus (But I'm the Hottentots)", Ball State University Forum, 1980
- "In the Study, Just Before Lunch", "The Artwork on the Backs of Gargoyles", and "Good Friday, Going Hungry", Poet Lore, Winter 1980
- "Brilliant Alliance", Literary Review, 1980
- "The Dish Ran Away With the Spoon", Descant, Fall 1980
- "When I was Crazy", and "Halfway Between Drownings", Descant, Winter
- "Mirror Woman", Northeast Review, Winter 1981
- "The Baby and After" and "Ezra", Green River Review, 1981
- "A Life", Southwest Review, 1981, Poet Lore, Winter 1981
- "Numbs", Hollins Critic, December 1981
- "The Dark Facts", "A Day of the Pavement", "Emily Dickinson Meets Ogden Nash", and "Bedtime", The Portland Review, Winter 1981
- "Stone Boat", Hollins Critic, December 1981
- "Rousseau: A Mirror Sonnet" and "An Old Snapshot", Green River Review
- "Another Life", Poet Lore, 1981
- "Floating Women", and "Duel", Wind, 1982
- "Guess Who", "Rhapsody on Terry", "Shadow Children", and "On His Deathbed", Webster Review, Spring 1982
- "Pigs on Pilgramage", Focus/Midwest, 1982
- "Lady Psychologist, Leaving Home", Aspen Leaves Anthology, 1982
- "Escape from the Locker Room", Poetry Now, 1982
- "Colors Like Spokane", Southern Humanities ReviewSouthern humanities reviewThe Southern Humanities Review is a quarterly literary journal published by Auburn University . The current editors are Dan Latimer and Chantel Acevedo. It publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, and book reviews on the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, and history...
, Spring 1982 - "Riverbeds in Times of Drought", Literary Review, Spring 1982
- "Sick and Tired of Marriage", "Fox Vita", "Days of the Week", and "Relatives", Green River Review, 1982
- "Stone Wine", Poet Lore, 1982
- "Armored Girl", Focus/Midwest, 1982
- "Amelia and John", Hiram Poetry Review, Fall/Winter 1982
- "Shadow Children", Webster Review, 1982
- Jiri Orton's Elegies, tr. Cross Currents, 1982
- "Stepfather", and "Surfacing", Chiaroscuro, 1983
- "Opium Fields in Time of War", Poet Lore, 1983
- "An Old Bachelor", Kansas Quarterly Review, January 1983
- "The Empty House" and "Sea of Children, Prairie Schooner, 1983
- "In Memory of Roethke" and "Ezra", Green River Review, 1983
- Two Poems by Nezval, Cross Currents, 1983
- "Me and Me", Northeast Review, 1983/1984
- "Deathbed/Childbed", Hollins Critic, April 1983
- "Ending End", Hollins Critic, December 1983
- "Cold Venus at the Typewriter", Poet Lore, 1983
- Seifert's "The Plague Monument", tr. Cross Currents, 1983
- Three Poems by Jarostav Seifert, tr. Concerning Poetry, 1984
- "To the King from the Candle", The Blackbird Looks Back", "Mad Poem", and "In the Dance Studio", Paunch, January 1984
- "The Blank Baby", Michigan Quarterly ReviewMichigan Quarterly ReviewThe Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...
, Winter 1984 - "The Poet Falls in Love", Poultry, 1984
- Rilke tr., Cross Currents, 1984
- "Gingerbread Men", Blue Ox Review, 1985
- "She Longs For Her White Lover", Hollins Critic, December 1985
- "Milking the Cow of Your Dreams" and "Dream Corder", New Collage, Spring 1985
- "Another Life", New Collage, Summer 1986
- "Molto Vivace", Confrontation, Spring/Summer 1986
- "Unwrapped Gifts", Footwork, 1986
- "Pigs On Pilgrimage", Midwest Review
- "The Widower Grows Lustful", Mid-American ReviewMid-American ReviewMid-American Review is an international literary journal dedicated to publishing contemporary fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and translations. Founded in 1981, MAR is a publication of the Department of English and the College of Arts & Sciences at Bowling Green State University...
, 1986 - "The Plague Monument", and "Ivanescence", Seifert tr. Cross Currents
- Brodsky's "Lithuanian Nocturne", tr. Cross Currents, 1986
- "The Pope in South America", "Our Resident Executioner", Bernini's St. Theresa", and "Father/Daughter", Gryphon, 1986
- Collection of Poems by Uwe Kolbe, tr. with B. Walker, Cross Currents
- "Wherever You Go There You Are", Cross Currents, 1987
- "Bedtime", The Blue Ox Review, Fall 1987
- "Sister Mary Algebra", "Me and Me", "Reading by the Brass Lamp", and "Marilyn", The Blue Moon Review, 1998
- "What is Prohibited", "Black Picture", "Snowflakes", "What Are We?", and "Screaming", http.//vqroline.com/ The Virginia Quarterly, 2007
Plays
- "Vera's Red Hat" (performed at Stone Soup Theater, Seattle, summer, 2011)
- "Lutefisk" (performed in New York, spring, 2010 and Nordic Museum, summer, 2010)
- "Rodin's Girl Friend" (performed at TaDa! Theater in New York, part of "One Woman Standing," spring, 2010.)
- "His Russian Wife" (performed at Boston University's Playwright Theater, as part of their Russian Festival, February, 2010.)
- "Seabird," "The Box," "The Museum," "The Tomcat" (performed at Where Eagles Dare Theater in New York, summer, 2009)
- "Lutefisk" (performed at Odd Duck Studios in Seattle, Washington, as part of Seattle Playwrights' Collective's Showcase, 2009.)
- "The Table" (performed in Singapore, as part of Short + Sweet, summer, 2009.
- "The Only Pretty Thing in the Room" (performed at ArtsWest in Seattle, Washington, as part of Seattle Playwrights' Studio's Showcase, 2009.
- "The Difference Between Altoona and Alpena" (performed at ArtsWest in Seattle, Washington, as part of Seattle Playwrights' Studio's Showcase, 2008.
- "Thin Walls" (performed at the Craft Theatre in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Attic Theatre in Detroit, Michigan, 1987)
- "Nocturnal Emissions" (performed at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan) - "The Characters are Anyone, The Place Anywhere" (performed at The Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1986) - "Two Square Meals" (performed at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1985, and at the Trueblood Theatre at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan) - "This Side Up" (performed at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and at the Craft Theatre, Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a special performance to benefit St. Joseph's Hospital Cancer Fund, 1985) - "Halfway Measures" (performed script-in-hand at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1985) - "A Stone's Throw" (read at the Attic Theatre in Detroit, Michigan, 1982)
- "The Atomic Weight of Potassium" (read at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1983) - "The Atomic Weight of Potassium" (performed at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1983) - "Acting Out" (performed script-in-hand at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1983) - "Straws in the Wind" (read and performed at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1983) - "Genie in a Klein Bottle" (performed script-in-hand at the Performance Network TheatrePerformance Network TheatrePerformance Network Theatre is Ann Arbor, Michigan's only professional theatre, formed in 1981. It produces a wide variety of dramas, classics and comedies, many of which are World or Michigan Premieres. Its professional season runs year-round...
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1984) - "The Maze in the Aquarium"
- "Fries in a Wineglass"
- "Tonsils and Adenoids"
Coffin also translated and adapted Milan Uhde
Milan Uhde
Milan Uhde is a Czech playwright and politician. He is a member of the Civic Democratic Party.Uhde previously worked at a literary journal, but the publication was banned in 1972...
's play Ave Maria, Played Softly for the stage.
Essays and articles
- "Guantanamo in Tacoma," "The N Word," and other short essays, speakwithoutinterruption.com, 2010-2011
- "On Jaroslav Seifert", Concerning Poetry, international issue, vol. 17, no. 2, 1984
- "A.R. Ammons", Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1, A-D, 1981
- "The Inside is Outside; A Review of Six First Books of Poetry", Michigan Quarterly ReviewMichigan Quarterly ReviewThe Michigan Quarterly Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1962 and published at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.The quarterly publishes art, essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews as well as writing "in a wide variety of research areas", according to...
, Fall 1978 - "Benjamin Britten's War Requiem", Generation, 1964
- "Dear Ron: A Review of Ron Sukenick's stories", Golden Handcuffs Review, Fall 2007
- "So Many Windows-- A Review of Judith Roche's The Wisdom of the Body", Big Bridge, 2008
Anthologies/Chapbooks
- "The Music Box", "Mother's Note Home: A Self-Portrait", "Chant for Nicole", "Crystals of the Unforeseen", "Shooting into the Light", "Point of View Problems", and "The Psychiatrist's Second Wife", in Wind Eyes: A Woman's Reader and Writing Source, an anthology of work by eight women writers. Plain View Press, 1997. Edited by Susan Bright and Margo LaGattuta.
- Wild Turkeys, poetry slam chapbook, 1998
- "A Ghost from the Future", a short story, in Departed Family and Friends (Haunted Encounters series). Atriad Press, 2005.
- "Ned's Aria", "Rapunzel", "Paradelle on Love", "Dying in the Hospital", "After the Funeral", and :Eurydice's Motivations", in ' 'Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range, an anthology of Pacific Northwest Poets, Rose Alley Press, 2007. Edited by David Horowitz.
Awards
- Major and Minor Hopwood AwardHopwood AwardThe Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist and member of the Class of 1905 of The University of Michigan, one-fifth of Mr. Hopwood's estate was given to the...
s in every category (Drama, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Poetry, and Essay). - First prize in Translation from the Academy of American PoetsAcademy of American PoetsThe Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...
for her translation of Orten's Elegies. - First prize in the International Poetry Review for "Selected Orten Translations".
- Finalist in the Actor's Theatre of Louisville Short Play Competition (for "Tonsils and Adenoids").
- Recipient of a National Endowment for the HumanitiesNational Endowment for the HumanitiesThe National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
grant - Second place winner of the Porad Haiku Award (2004)
- First prize, Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Award (2004)
- "Best Poems and Poets of 2005", poetry.com
- Winner, Bart BaxterBart BaxterBart Baxter is an American poet living in the Seattle, Washington area. He has been published in Ergo, Seattle Review, Red Cedar Review, The Ohio Poetry Review and Raven Chronicles...
Performance Poetry Award (2006) - Runner-up, Genghis Khan Poetry Prize (World Congress of Poets, Mongolia) 2006
- Winner, Gandhi Poetry Prize (World Congress of Poets, India) 2007
Style and Literary Influences
Coffin's work is characterized by its focus on interpersonal relationships, specifically romantic relationships between men and women and relationships between family members. In his introduction to Crystals of the Unforeseen, Laurence Goldstein says that her writing, like that of other women writers, often describes "survival and (less often) victory in the war between the sexes."Coffin is a versatile writer, drawing on multiple genres, and has been recognized for the wide diversity of her works. Her pieces tend to be short; many of the plays are one act in length, and Coffin has written flash fiction
Flash fiction
Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category...
and haiku
Haiku in English
Haiku in English is a development of the Japanese haiku poetic form in the English language.Contemporary haiku are written in many languages, but most poets outside of Japan are concentrated in the English-speaking countries....
. She clearly enjoys playing with structure—she has written sonnets, acrostics, sestinas, and villanelles--as well as language; her pieces are filled with puns, "one-liners", and a multiplicity of metaphors. Here, Goldstein calls attention to her notable wordsmithing:
"That's what it all comes back to – the timbre of speech, the astonishing succession of tropes that capture our attention. Aristotle said that the talent for figures of speech is the one kind of rhetoric that cannot be learned. And what a pleasure it is to read an author with such mastery over metaphors. The writing sparkles with them:
You know where you’re headed after you arrive –
an empty station where a wind like
the desert sighing drifts in one door and
out the other, and the remains of windows
are glass daggers stuck like teeth in wooden gums…
After we arrive at the end of the poem, we appreciate better the thematic function of such images, how they form a network that articulates a capacious vision of human experience. But in the process of reading we simply enjoy them for their originality, their superiority to the quotidian language confronting us on the street, in the office, in front of the TV. And the fiction and plays offer us the same pleasures: "a Slavic accent that had clearly been through a British wringer;" "At night he plies on blankets. I’m keeping you under wraps, he says." "I bet you can’t name me a single red-blooded American guy who had even a fraction of a childhood." One could quote forever the one and two-liners that punctuate Coffin's Crystals of the Unforeseen."
Coffin's writing is sprinkled with literary allusions (the result no doubt of her graduate education and a career spent teaching English). She has said that she "love[s] to muck around in the loam of language" and that she sometimes prefers to begin with "the 'edges' of a poem fixed" by confining herself to a particular form.
Coffin's work contains intimate (and sometimes uncomfortable) revelations and is chiefly focused on inward perception and self-exploration—if not of the author herself, certainly of her characters. Literary influences would include Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, but also the confessional poets such as Anne Sexton. Coffin's pieces are frequently autobiographical, drawing on personal experience. In a review for the back of Crystals, Alice Fulton
Alice Fulton
Alice Fulton is an American author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.- Biography :Fulton was born and raised in Troy, New York, the youngest of three daughters. Her father was the proprietor of the historic Phoenix Hotel, and her mother was a visiting nurse. She began writing poetry in high school...
calls attention to "the veracity with which [Coffin] pursues her demons and delights."
The recurring themes to be found in Coffin's writing of death, sex, and mental illness are also typical of the confessional school. For example, in "Me and Me", Coffin describes a suicide:
Looking only in the glass, I put knife to
flesh as pen to paper, drawing a fine line
from shoulder blade to shoulder blade and then
another down the spine. A thin cross of blood
sprang into view and I relaxed, knowing
police would soon be dancing blue attendance.
Coffin's pieces contain many dark notes. Pain is often paradoxically mixed with humor or conveyed in a sing-songy, deceptively childlike voice that is reminiscent of Sylvia Plath. In "Amelia Mealy Mouth", Coffin writes:
When I dreamed, I dreamed I was a doll.
She knew my whole story but she'd only
tell me the start. This is you, she said, You're in
bed. This is Amelia--She looks like me.
You love Amelia for her bright red hair, and
feel sad, but Amelia feels nothing at all.
The images and tone of voice in Coffin's poem "Zombie" are also Plathlike:
...My zombie blood, slick
with oil, sometimes caught fire and burned all night.
I spoke in riddles, and was known to mutter
to myself. At meals, I kept pats of butter
cooling on my tongue like lozenges.
Goldstein writes that Coffin "reads the tradition as one that virtually excludes a woman writer like herself... the situation of the woman writer... is something like the position of women in [her] poems and stories... it is precarious, contingent, often dependent on men for favors." Coffin usually portrays events and people from a woman's perspective, and her work has been featured in an anthology of women's voices.
There is less emphasis placed on plot in Coffin's writing; or, rather, the plot is principally psychological and verbal. There are rarely more than two (central) characters in her poems, stories, and plays, and most of these are driven by interior monologues and searching dialogue or witty banter rather than physical action.
Miscellaneous
- Coffin was part of a four-person team (the only woman) representing Ann Arbor at the 1998 National Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas.
- Coffin's show, "Food, Dreams, and a Pi Table" was featured at Bumbershoot 2004, in Seattle.
- Coffin was the featured poet at the February 17, 2006 meeting of the Public Safety, Government Relations, and Arts Committee Meeting of the Seattle City Council.
External links
- Coffin's entry in PoetsWest Directory of Northwest Poets
- Coffin's entry at SeattlePoetPopulist.org
- Bio of Coffin at bigbridge.com.
- "Last night, I dreamed about Aunt Percy." Poem featured at the February 17, 2006 Seattle City Council meeting.