Liar: A Poem

by Lynn Crosbie

A book-length narrative poem, this sassy, confessional, intoxicating, and heartbreaking work charts the ups and downs of a torrid love affair. From illusions of permanence and ownership to the pain of estrangement, Liar masterfully explores feelings familiar to anyone who has ever loved — and lost. Crosbie also goes beyond this territory, examining the lover’s own complicity in her joy and suffering. Liar is a grotesque, beautiful meditation on the nature of love.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

149 pages, Paperback

First published February 6, 2006

About the author

Lynn Crosbie is a Canadian poet and novelist. She teaches at the University of Toronto.

She received her Ph.D in English from the University of Toronto, writing her thesis on the work of the American poet Anne Sexton.

Crosbie has lectured on and written about visual art at the AGO, the Power Plant, and OCAD University (where she taught for six years.) She is an award-winning journalist and regular contributor to Fashion magazine and Hazlitt. She has had columns in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, Flare and Eye magazine.

Reviews

[Kyla · Rating 3 out of 5]

If the rating system was based purely on balls (or ovaries or whatever) this would get a 5 because a scathing personal prose poem about someone you dated for many years who is also part of the Canadian poetry scene eg the tiniest microcosm of people in the literary world - is All Balls. I nodded my head but my guts never quivered, if you know what I mean.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm such a sucker for stories in verse, epic poems and the like. This didn't disappoint. A great take on the awful relationship and shitty Artiste men. Some great turns of phrase that jab sharp and poignant, and the flow makes it so hard to put down.

[Kellie Chouinard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tad whiny, but otherwise pretty interesting. The language is a bit bland, though.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this long, 149-page poem for one of my courses. This book is confessional, personal and highly autobiographical, as it chronicles the disintegration of the poet's relationship with another Canadian poet. Liar begins two years after the breakup, then continuously flips back and fourth between before, during and after the relationship.

I didn't love Liar - I thought it was a little long, and could have been better if it was shorter or divided in a different way. Despite this, there were quite a few phrases/lines/moments in the poem that caught my attention, and I think that if I re-read Liar I would enjoy it more.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read books aloud to my husband while he cooks breakfast on the weekends. For the past 8 weeks, we've been reading Liar. It's a great book to read aloud because the writing is excellent, full of strong imagery and crisp diction. I am enthralled with the long poem and admire anyone who can sustain the reader's attention throughout as Lynn Crosbie does here. Liar contains a rage of emotions and tones from anger to sadness to frustration to wry humour. I recommend this book for anyone who has ever been left by a lover or lied to. It's brilliant and startling.

[Frankie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought Kristin’s review was so excellent. When she goes “Yuck” at the end ha ha ha lol. I was worried you had to be smart to be on this! Thanks Kris! I am halfway through this and omfg! I just broke up with a cheating sack of u no what (ha!) and it’s amazing someone gets it. But it’s dense and like the philosophy I was forced to read for my GED, except not so BORING. I’m way into this. Hey Lynn! Let’s go find them guys. And _talk_. Xo

[Zibbernaut · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. This was disjointed and dragged a lot. We kept going back and forth in the timeline, from being with the shitty boyfriend to being separated, to moments with him, to how he left her, back to a holiday occurrence with him... it was just hard to follow, and I was done.

[Sio · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book broke my heart, changed my life and convinced me once and for all that a woman has the below the waist grit to fuck with the patriarchy and write great shit.

[Viraj · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t think the premise would remotely connect with me at all, but Crosbie paints an intimate portraiture of incompletion that affected me deeply

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Confessional poetry of this type is tricky; it can easily become self-indulgent, narcissistic. Not just naval-gazing but wanting everyone else to gaze at the same naval because it is the most important naval in the world! This book, unfortunately, doesn't completely solve these problems. At times it is very moving and there are good lines and moments of insight, but it needs more discipline--formal, intellectual, emotional--to sustain its rather formless length. After a while it starts to feel like listening to a friend talk about her breakup AGAIN; there's a moment at the end of the book where she realises her hairdresser is wincing as she brings it up again and thinks maybe it's time to stop talking about it. I felt like that too often as I read this book. The liar of the title is, of course, her ex, but it is also herself as she comes painfully to acknowledge her own complicity in what happened in their relationship. The man in question is a fairly prominent Canadian poet and one wonders what he thinks about being publicly eviscerated in this way. A blurb on the back cover compares the book to Atwood's Power Politics, and that's an instructive comparison, because Atwood absolutely does have the formal chops to pull this off; Power Politics is blistering and powerful and endlessly moving. This, not so much. But I have to say that the book design is fabulous, one of the best I've seen in ages.

[Juliet · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 3/4 stars.

Worth reading and parts are dazzling--but I think it could have been considerably shorter and would have been more powerful that way. The length and extraneousness defused the power.

Not my favorite by Crosbie.

'Pearl', 'Villainelle', 'Queen Rat' and 'Liar' are all better, at least in my book.

***

"The heart's obscenity is anatomical. If I were a mad scientist,
I would turn this organ into a honeycomb--

each ventricle would contain its honey and stings,
the drone of its many correlatives,

preparing itself to be abandoned by the itinerant swarm,
and its little aches

its bristling tenancy."

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a 150-page book of insufferable whining about a break-up. Much too confessional for my tastes, although the writing itself is excellent--imagery, music, juxtaposition...The author says it all in her acknowledgements: "Others [poems:] are indebted to...Bob Dylan, Ernest Hemingway, Elizabeth Bishop, Hole...Nirvana...Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and a Toronto Life rejection letter. Still others, and all, are, at heart, dedicated to the one I loved." Blech.

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Homegrown talent Ms. Crosbie delivers with this long poem. Filled with raw, honest, real, emotion and tangible observations, she captures the happy and difficult moments of a relationship. I love her acknowledgment of a rejection letter; first time for me and a little sassy. Each group of stanzas creates a capsule in time, a feeling, and leaves a certain after taste. Refreshingly smart, strong and sad. Highly recommended.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read through this poem countless times over the past few years, and maintain a strong love/hate relationship with it. The poetry itself is beautifully written, but the content comes across as uncomfortably self conscious and narcissistic at times, which turns me off (until I forget the latter and come crawling back for the former).