Lynn Strongin

Lynn Strongin (born February 27, 1939) is an American poet currently residing in Canada who has published more than two dozen books. A pioneering writer on issues of feminism and disability, her poetry and other writings have appeared in a large number of literary magazines and influential anthologies including Sisterhood Is Powerful, No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women, and Rising Tides: 20th Century American Women Poets.

Life

Strongin was born in 1939 in New York City to a middle-class Jewish family of Eastern European background. Her father, Edward I. Strongin, was a psychologist and her mother, Marguerite, an artist. During World War 2, her father's work with injured and shell-shocked soldiers led the family to travel across the Eastern and Southern United States. In the South, Strongin's family faced a large amount of discrimination, an experience that worked its way into her later writings. She also spent over half a year in a rehabilitation hospital

When Strongin attended the Manhattan School of Music, she was the only student who'd had polio and used braces and crutches. To avoid being stared at, she would arrive early to class and be the last to leave. She later transferred to Hunter College and also attended Stanford University, where she earned a Master of Arts in literature.

After receiving her masters, Strongin taught at various colleges including Merritt College, Mills College and the University of New Mexico before moving in the 1960s to Berkeley area, where she became politically active and worked for Denise Levertov.

In 1971, Strongin received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing grant. Her first book of poetry, The Dwarf Cycle, was published the following year. Her younger sister is Martha Strongin Katz, founding violist of The Cleveland Quartet. who focuses on themes of feminism, lesbianism, trauma, pain, strength, illness and disability, many of Stongin's writings from the 1960s and '70s were published in influential anthologies such as Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, I Hear My Sisters Saying: Poems by Twentieth-Century Women, Rising Tides: 20th Century American Women Poets, 31 New American Poets, No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women, and The American Literary Anthology, 2. During this time she also published a number of poems in various magazines and journals such as Poetry, New York Quarterly and The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States.

In 1980, the publisher Spinsters Ink released a call to readers and bookstores in Feminist Bookstores Newsletter seeking donations to fund the release of the press' next two titles, The Cancer Journals by Audre Lourde and Strongin's first novel Bones & Kim. The call for donations succeeded and both books were published.

Strongin has continued to publish in recent decades, with her poetry, reviews and writings appearing in a large number of literary journals including Antigonish Review, Poetry, Poetry Flash, Southern Humanities Review, Shenandoah, and storySouth along with anthologies such as Avant-Garde for the New Millennium, Best of the Web 2009, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, and Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson.

Critical response

Strongin's poetry has been called both "arduous and gentle" and is noted for the "use of varied line lengths and single-line stanzas" that force people to slow down to read her poems. Library Journal called her poetry collection Countrywoman/Surgeon an "evocation of life perceived beautifully through the senses. The collection was also nominated for the Elliston Award. Library Journal also named her collection Nightmare of Mouse: Poems as one of their best small press titles of 1977.

Denise Levertov described Strongin as a "true poet" while Hugh Fox called her the "most exciting poet writing today." Writing in Poetry Flash, James LeCuyer said that Strongin's poetry "glows with creative leaps of the imagination, a playful wildness and ironic humor ... her poetry and stories dance passionately." Hugh Fox's poem "Here I Am" mentions Strongin by name.

Awards

Strongin has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Association of University Women, She has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and has received a George Woodcock Grant for Writers.