Res ipsa loquitor—the thing speaks for itself—as the lawyers say. But does it? Not in Michael Lieberman’s new book of poems, Bonfire of the Verities. What speaks here is doubt and the commitment to cast aside the apparent truths we all accumulate. Those verities are what are tossed onto Lieberman's bonfire:
It is here I heap
the platitudes
I cannot keep.
He grounds his struggle precisely:
The coordinates of the country of doubt
are 29º, 45’ N / 95º, 21’ W,
which are those of Houston, his adopted city. It is an unusual poet who is willing to pare away belief and accept that truths—received or earned—must be discarded as we face the unknowable mystery. In the end what Lieberman wrests from the void is the recognition that there is no ultimate choice but dissolution:
This fire burns in me—
it cannot set me free
it leaves me ash, not tree.
And yet ash is both residue and tree, offering the possibility that dissolution is a kind of redemption.
Res ipsa loquitor—the thing speaks for itself—as the lawyers say. But does it? Not in Michael Lieberman’s new book of poems, Bonfire of the Verities. What speaks here is doubt and the commitment to cast aside the apparent truths we all accumulate. Those verities are what are tossed onto Lieberman's bonfire:
It is here I heap
the platitudes
I cannot keep.
He grounds his struggle precisely:
The coordinates of the country of doubt
are 29º, 45’ N / 95º, 21’ W,
which are those of Houston, his adopted city. It is an unusual poet who is willing to pare away belief and accept that truths—received or earned—must be discarded as we face the unknowable mystery. In the end what Lieberman wrests from the void is the recognition that there is no ultimate choice but dissolution:
This fire burns in me—
it cannot set me free
it leaves me ash, not tree.
And yet ash is both residue and tree, offering the possibility that dissolution is a kind of redemption.
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Overview
Res ipsa loquitor—the thing speaks for itself—as the lawyers say. But does it? Not in Michael Lieberman’s new book of poems, Bonfire of the Verities. What speaks here is doubt and the commitment to cast aside the apparent truths we all accumulate. Those verities are what are tossed onto Lieberman's bonfire:
It is here I heap
the platitudes
I cannot keep.
He grounds his struggle precisely:
The coordinates of the country of doubt
are 29º, 45’ N / 95º, 21’ W,
which are those of Houston, his adopted city. It is an unusual poet who is willing to pare away belief and accept that truths—received or earned—must be discarded as we face the unknowable mystery. In the end what Lieberman wrests from the void is the recognition that there is no ultimate choice but dissolution:
This fire burns in me—
it cannot set me free
it leaves me ash, not tree.
And yet ash is both residue and tree, offering the possibility that dissolution is a kind of redemption.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781937875312 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Texas Review Press |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 80 |
| File size: | 566 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Bonfire of the Verities
By Michael Lieberman
Texas Review Press
Copyright © 2013 Michael LiebermanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-937875-31-2
CHAPTER 1
The Color of God's Eyes
Spinoza, God-intoxicated lens grinder,
knows the color of God's eyes, though
he chooses not to say, to cloud the issue
over like a cataract, to force us to contemplate
a face-to-face encounter with the darkness.
When we had our icons it was easier—
we could avert our eyes from his with confidence.
There was a heaven and a hell to burn in,
a place to pasture sheep. Refuge.
Like the patriarchs Spinoza has come
face to face with God. In good conscience
he cannot reveal their color. The brave man
chooses to be cast out and shunned
rather than sow discord with his doubt.
God, he thinks, has no eye, unless
it is the eye of the storm—the one we swirl
and swill in the taverns of our contemplation,
waiting for this Dutch Jacob to return
from his encounter, declare the contest
a draw and tell us that to be released
to life again, he has had to sign
a nondisclosure agreement, that all
he is permitted to say is that God,
who has one evil eye and one good one,
is the moving force of the universe.
Sphinx Moth
A sphinx moth sleeps under a light at the bus terminal.
All dressed up and no place to go.
All dressed up and everyplace to go.
A sphinx moth feeds at the honeysuckle,
sleeps in the night, waits for a call on his cell phone
or someone to come by with a question.
Not much you can't find on an iPhone these days.
One evening a girl does come by.
She tries out a conjecture on the drowsy moth:
The illuminated mysterious is the moth
and the moth is the word
and the word is the raptor
which hunts in the darkness,
solders the sequined light in place,
outlines and decorates the formless surface—
in the end what is fashioned
is only a beginning, as at every instant
of a journey another is beginning.
There are as many journeys as points on a line—
as many lines and lines of thought
as there are points and points of departure.
Look, the moth says, I've spent a lot of time
hanging out at the bus terminal. And sleeping.
You give me too much credit.
Specific Gravity
The density of a substance
relative to that of water or air
Specific gravity is not specific,
not at all—at this moment
rosemary grows in our kitchen.
It measures one thing relative
to another—to light or drought
to sun and nutrients, perhaps to love,
or what the final meaning of fragrance is—
and in the bargain assures us
there is no final meaning.
Yet all the while we know
things finally mean—wars mean,
desecrations mean. Every incursion
has a specific gravity at every
check point in every parched land.
Gravity is always specific—
it is June, 1940 and the Germans
are advancing everywhere
and you are nine and running
with your family and escape
to X where they only have food
to feed themselves and you watch
your father swell and starve to death.
Or Hungary in 1956 or Prague Spring,
Arab Spring, Pinochet, the Towers.
(Gettysburg, Leningrad, Dachau—
the list is too long for a poem, a book, a library.)
The moisture of the spirit is relative
like a kiss, like humidity.
The world is full of specific gravities—
your four-year-old has cancer
of both eyes and doctors can save
his life but not his sight.
Your mother's Alzheimer's disease
that is yours as well as hers.
Earth has specific gravity, fire does.
Together they might be a consuming,
inelastic darkness—or a shelter.
Gravity is always specific as when
you get laid off in Detroit when your line
closes and your benefits run out,
and you are fifty-seven in January
with no heat. No one needs janitors
to sweep up broken glass and the leaves
the bitter wind pushes through the windows.
The number of specific gravities
in each heart grows at every second,
expands faster than the universe—
the specific gravity of connection,
of dissolution. Of stone or dust.
How many specific gravities of love
can we count—or grief or loss?
Tears have a specific gravity of one
against which everything else is measured.
The universe expands, our lives
drift, children learn to count
and what they can count on.
Conjecture joins things together,
sometimes absurdly, sometimes not.
You can almost be sure all gravity
is specific until the final freezing
of water in our landscape.
The Reason for Flowers
Each fall in Houston I'm bullish on flowers.
I never sell them short. I hunt bargains
like a Wall Street trader, values with an upside
that will shine in the winter darkness,
sound stock with growth potential,
impervious to cranky winds and intrusive frosts.
In a down market traders hedge.
I pass on Transvaal daisies.
Petunias will fade like a floozy at a truck stop.
I'll earn a little profit with begonias,
take a mild risk with impatiens.
In my yard, which swings hysterically between sun and shade,
I'll place a bet on sweet alyssum,
nothing elaborate, just a few pots
in the sun next to the warmth of the house.
Some dark morning three months hence
I'll get down on my knees, push my snoot
into those pots and breathe in the deep feminine—which
is the only reason for flowers.
Notes Towards a Theology of Doubt
1.
"Trust in God and keep your powder dry"
is a Cromwell quote we might apply
in place of Fide Semper Vincere.
I'll raise a glass of cold Vouvray
or a Bud or mug of Guinness Stout
to all of those who favor doubt.
I count myself among the pack
that sees faith riding on doubt's back.
2.
In the event of my death
remember it is timely.
Who can live, abundantly
or otherwise, beyond
what neutral circumstance permits?
3.
A torrential rain off the Gulf
has puddled in my driveway.
Mare nostrum, I remember—the
Romans owned it all, or everything
they thought worth owning. I am,
I think, master of a disappearing pond.
4.
I am one who ignores
advice and could succumb
to gluttony if the Lord
would grant me petit fours,
but if he plays the maverick
and offers up Italian—
sweet Lord, think linguine with clams—
I'll be pleased to suffer garlic.
5.
I am death's customer,
sure I want to purchase nothing
in his kiosk of rancid wares—
I ask for a store credit, I tell him
I'll wait for the new lines in the spring.
6.
What would you say to a wager—
a bet that somewhere between
Whole Foods and Krogers
there are the hungry and the needy
and I am going to pass them by?
7.
Sun going down on Memorial Day,
and through the chain link fence—
oleander, the burl of a long dead
tree stuck in the links, persisting
like gristle between the teeth.
8.
Some days I walk flat-footed,
sometimes I shuffle or shamble,
or gimp—disguise my arrival,
hoping death will bar the door
and turn the bolt against my entry.
9.
Received wisdom at a gas station
on the card of a real estate broker—
Isaiah 32:18: And my people
shall dwell in a peaceable habitation.
Omitted are the street address and zip code.
10.
All roads lead to Rome
except the Tour de France
except the Ringstrasse,
that Ouroboros of faded modernity,
except the bridge to Toledo
except the Trail of Tears
except the road to Santiago de Compostela
except the autostrada to Firenze
from Rome which leads
like the others to our eking out
the yardage of our forward progress.
11.
A solitary wasp ignores
the blossoms of my vinca
and forages beneath the leaves.
What can her quest be
that commands my full attention?
12.
I must manage with the quotidian,
never accepting less, never waiting
at the bus stop of a shabby barrio
or in imagined savannas and open forests—
waiting for fineness to crystallize
into my life, never accepting imperatives.
13.
Who has agency in the hardscrabble
land of the spirit, unless it is
our impoverished selves, famished,
each of us, feral and lost,
in the iPhone marshes of the present?
14.
Civility in all things civil
is what we need, Jung thought.
Yet consider an assault on darkness,
the high barricade to be breached
with total disregard for form if we are
to return to a common discourse for our woes.
15.
I'll not disguise my lewdness
when it comes to flowers.
Earlier you glimpsed forsythia,
which makes me randy, crazy with lust.
Now I offer you six newly planted roses,
every thorn starved for water
in the inferno of a Houston summer.
16.
We live under the freeway of ourselves,
our urban shades our meager offering,
illuminated by trafficking in the only
squalid splendor we can know.
Presence
The hydrangea sits
a single clot
along the edge
of the fence
my neighbor's dogs
have chewed
and burrowed under.
Not the least perturbed
a single globe
a world with an end
a two-week lease
perfect in its time.
In This Poem I Predict the Coming of the Messiah
Set aside from each other like birch
and olive tree are the "I"s and "thou"s
that steal each other's lines
in a bad comedy skit. Who says,
Many are called and few are chosen, or
Called or not the gods are present?
We are the Torquemadas of ourselves—
who else can we be? We are
called out, found out by our torments.
What if one's calling
is not to come out but to wind
around the stylus of one's self,
spindled and waiting
to wring small miracles of doubt
from the latrine within?
Or to unwind, to wend toward
a black province after the sun
drops dead and mosquitoes suck
you dry of everything but
the pure discomfort of being?
Now you're talking Messiah.
(Don't think those uninvited gods
don't have their own problems
with gout and vermin. You are
not alone in gratitude for
strong coffee and the sunrise.)
To be self-piked, self-impaled
by one's innards, is unbearable.
A god has to do what a god has to do.
You wait in a dark cave for three days,
hoping the mystery will swaddle you,
the transcendent other will suffuse you,
and then you get the fuck out
before the roof caves in.
Medical Emergency
Cardiac tamponade whittles you down
to a nub of pencil. Withers you.
You set the pencil down and rest.
Your heartbeat so faint you cannot
mark even an X to any decent act,
your murmurs of ascent inaudible,
your doubts muffled beyond sonar.
The python within squeezes you—
you hesitate without missing a beat.
Oxygen waits in your lungs for an entry visa.
The flow of lymph is more than you
can manage. I tell you with all my heart—
Cardiac tamponade is the black death of our time.
Laser Bearer
Star bound
earth bound
you festoon
the path
with punctate
darkness
Once I thought
to penetrate
the dured
evanescence—
I could not
unless I
entered through
such fenestrations—
and only
for an instant
That flash
blinded me
exposed
the neural lapse—
that enduring gap
hard-wired
always present
in the vagabond
heart
the cribriform
heart
the troubadour
heart
The Cloisters
We took the A train as instructed.
Of course they were old instructions,
and whatever it was he wanted us to do
in Harlem, we didn't. We had other plans
that morning, though by mistake
we got off at a hundred and ninth to ask.
Oh, you're way too early. Catch the next one
north—which is what we did.
Okay, I thought, this is okay
as we rattled amidst noise and sway
and determined Kindle readers.
I tried to imagine the way it was
for Trappist monks during the long,
silent winters of Northern France—
only the chanting and the wind
and the hope of God's voice.
I admit to guilt around the subject
of extreme submission. Such repose
for me is too much of a good thing.
Sometimes I need to escape the quiet,
though the subway felt like subjugation,
each of us trapped in jarring isolation.
I had no hope of losing myself like the man
across the car who squinted at a Bible.
I was glad when we left the racket and broke
out to the light—the Hudson far below,
still, on a windless day. A brief walk,
and once inside the gates, we faced a swell
of granite, bare and cleft, and everywhere
quarried through with pools of azaleas
and tulips that took us prisoner.
Tuesday Afternoon
In Memory of Jack Gilbert
We don't say much about him,
she smoking a cigarette and I
drinking black coffee from a mug,
both of us looking out on
the street below. Yet something
must be said. He can no longer
speak for himself. Tau protein
has tangled his thought and
plaques have destroyed his words.
Should we mention the girl
in the blue halter below,
or the tree busy being green?
Would that do it, bring back
the Aegean, the black sands
of Santorini or Thira
before the catastrophe—
or him before the slow devastation,
before he was left alone
in the ebb of his thoughts?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Bonfire of the Verities by Michael Lieberman. Copyright © 2013 Michael Lieberman. Excerpted by permission of Texas Review Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Other Publications,
Publication Information,
Dedication Page,
Table of Contents,
The Color of God's Eyes,
Sphinx Moth,
Specific Gravity,
The Reason for Flowers,
Notes Towards a Theology of Doubt,
Presence,
In This Poem I Predict the Coming of the Messiah,
Medical Emergency,
Laser Bearer,
The Cloisters,
Tuesday Afternoon,
Grant's Atlas of Anatomy,
Narcissus, the Flower, and then Some,
Found Poem,
Timeless Treasures,
An Orange Tree in Autumn,
Bonfire of the Verities,
Night Fog With Tetanus Shots,
X in Winter,
Conduit,
Certain Measures,
Vigil,
Special Commendation,
Giacometti's Armature,
It's a Matter of Dispute,
Souvenir of Provence,
A Dark Radiance,
Isobars,
In the Country of Doubt,
Monterrey Journal,
Pulsatile,
In Praise of the Arts,
For My Father,
Remembering My Mother,
Pittsburgh Writ Large,
Beginnings,
Brazil,
Groundswell for Rain,
Remembering Two Teachers,
Poetry Review,
Damascus Gate,
Metamorphosis,
Witness Protection Program,
After the Fall,
Hospital,
Action Plan,
Defining Depression,
One Fine Morning,
Journey,
Intelligence,
Flood Stage,
Poem for the New Year,
Meditation for the Last Night of My Life,
What People are Saying About This
"At once disarming and provocative, these poems weave science, religion and philosophy through the artifacts of life and relics of history to wonderful effect. We see a contingent world where unexplored connections between knowledge, dendrites, axons, and memories emerge in a compelling manner. This is important work."
—Joseph R. Larsen, Poet and First Amendment Lawyer
"As I read Bonfire of the Verities I thought of Kierkegaard, his "Knights of infinite resignation" a "Knights of faith" ... the struggles of a mind of great intellect to find credence to life's many dogmas and much like Dante's Virgil, allowing us readers to join the quest. I also am reminded of the voice found in the poems of Yehuda Amichai, the gentle use of irony with the juxtaposition of a mature, ingenious poet's deep readings of history with his own life experiences. Lieberman's marvelous insightful musings are a gift of intellect and spirit to all, who by reading them enter their light."
—David M. Parsons
2011 Texas Poet Laureate.