Becoming Lyla Dore

by Teri Youmans Grimm

Overview

In this collection of persona poems, Teri Youmans Grimm weaves the public history of silent film with the personal history of a fictional silent film star. Becoming Lyla Dore recounts the provocative fall and rise of a young woman whose coming of age coincides with that of moving pictures. Lyla's need to be desired becomes her downfall as well as the catalyst that drives her to success as a silent film actress. Through stunning imagery a character's vulnerabilities and strengths, her heartbreaks and triumphs are explored through the lens of history reimagined. These poems are luminous as nitrate film and just as incendiary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597093224
Publisher:	Red Hen Press
Publication date:	04/13/2016
Edition description:	1
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Teri Youmans Grimm is the author of one previous poetry collection: Dirt Eaters (UniversityPress of Florida). Her writing has also appeared in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Connecticut Review, South Dakota Review, Sugar House Review and Homegrown in Florida: An Anthology of Florida Childhoods, among other publications. She currently teaches in the low-res MFA program at the University of Nebraska. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida, with her husband and two children where she sings in a cover band and hunts alligators.

Table of Contents

Magic Lantern 13

When Kalem Studios Came to Town 15

Phantasmagoria 16

A Visit from the Snake Man 18

Gathering of Ghosts 19

At Kalem's Headquarters, the Roseland Hotel 23

The Filming of The Clarion 25

When Theda Bara Came to Town 29

I Recall That Summer 31

I Wasn't Pregnant, Dr. Moore Explained, Merely

Late and This Procedure, While Painful, Would Resolve the Matter or Becoming Lyla Dore 34

Refrain 36

Photoplay Brains and Beauty Contest Photograph 38

My Mother Tells Me I Was Conceived in Fire before I Was Condemned by It 39

The Snake Man Consoling 42

Ac the Station 43

On the Train to Hollywoodland 44

The Devil's Passkey 46

Fray 48

On Being Given a Monkey Fur Coat

From a Suitor 50

The Soubrette Takes Center Stage 51

Angel's Tit 52

When Henry Came to Town. 54

Flux 55

Go On, Please. This Is Very Interesting 56

This Is How It Ends 58

The Last Veil 59

When Henry Broke the Silence 62

For Henry 65

The Snake Man and the Pearl 66

This Is How It Really Began 68

This Is How It Really Ends 69

Magic Lantern Reprise 72

Star Dust 73

The Snake Man and the Ghosts of Beautiful Women 74

Notes 77

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Lyla Doyle, the fictional silent film star of Teri Grimm's new collection, is a remarkable creation. A figure of bittersweet glamour and sardonic self-awareness, Lyla has something of the wit and indomitability we see in Louise Brook's classic memoir, Lulu in Hollywood. Above all, Grimm reminds us that the vocabulary of the silent film and the vocabulary of the lyric poem—both are told in images, after all—are virtually one and the same. Grimm's love of those old films is palpable, and her skill with the lyric is formidable. Becoming Lyla Dore is a very fine collection indeed."

—David Wojahn

"Becoming Lyla Dore is a poetic memoir about attaining a 'golden and perilous' form of the American Dream. In these compelling, finely crafted poems, the sensitive, sensual, haunted Lyla goes West to the magic lantern of early Hollywood, transforming herself into its preeminent Vamp, for whom the cocktail 'Angel's Tit' gets named. Emulating the great filmmakers of that time, Grimm makes striking use of light and shadow to render Lyla's combustible 'world within the world.' And like Lyla, these poems can make you lose yourself fully in the moment."

—William Trowbridge, author of Oldguy: Superhero and Put This On, Please: New and Selected Poems

Editorial Reviews

Lyla Doyle, the fictional silent film star of Teri Grimm’s new collection, is a remarkable creation. A figure of bittersweet glamour and sardonic self-awareness, Lyla has something of the wit and indomitability we see in Louise Brook’s classic memoir, Lulu in Hollywood. Above all, Grimm reminds us that the vocabulary of the silent film and the vocabulary of the lyric poem—both are told in images, after all—are virtually one and the same. Grimm’s love of those old films is palpable, and her skill with the lyric is formidable. Becoming Lyla Dore is a very fine collection indeed.”
—David Wojahn 


“Becoming Lyla Dore is a poetic memoir about attaining a ‘golden and perilous’ form of the American Dream. In these compelling, finely­ crafted poems, the sensitive, sensual, haunted Lyla goes West to the magic lantern of early Hollywood, transforming herself into its preeminent Vamp, for whom the cocktail ‘Angel’s Tit’ gets named. Emulating the great filmmakers of that time, Grimm makes striking use of light and shadow to render Lyla’s combustible ‘world within the world.’ And like Lyla, these poems can make you lose yourself fully in the moment.”
—William Trowbridge, author of Put This On, Please: New and Selected Poems   

From the Publisher