A penetrating, measured group of poems exploring wonder, emotion, and the ways the world moves us.
Lieber uses details both small and infinite to explore the mind in this poetry collection.
A poet is a witness; everything the eye can see and the mind can remember can be put to paper and preserved. In this collection, the poet and his speakers embody this idea, gathering details from their day-to-day lives to home in on, from a hike with a young daughter to a talk with an old lover to a consideration of how to make the most of a nice afternoon in Manhattan. The collection is divided into four sections, but the text resembles the form of a novel. There’s a one-poem prologue, and a body that contains most of the verses; a couple of poems act as an epilogue, followed by an afterword. Lieber plays with character and physicality—many of the works feel expansive and ephemeral, without a body within them. (Occasionally, people appear in the peripheries.) The stakes can vary wildly: A janitor eats the tuna sandwich from his packed lunch, a woman tends to her garden, a father faces imminent death with a child in his arms. Lieber’s background as a psychoanalyst comes through obliquely in some poems that reference philosophers including Martin Heidegger and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy text. These poems feel more academic and less organic in their approach than the others, but all the work seeks what lies beyond that which can be seen, felt, heard, or tasted.
It’s hard to find new ways to capture how the natural world compels us, but Lieber has a sure knack for finding the finest, smallest details to evoke a scene; even New Jersey can become a place of “verve and luster,” with “an alpine / picture window bathed in the afterwash of an afternoon’s ease” (“Concordance”). The emotional register of the collection never escalates to rage, true oppressive sadness, or frenetic joy; everything is tinged with “something less decisive than goodbye.” The prevailing mood of the work is something like melancholy, but not quite. The book has a pervading sense of the inevitable—each vesper of mist, each bird, each manifestation of sage feels like surrender. (Of course, that which cannot neatly fit into emotional boxes becomes the scaffolding for poetry.) These verses, as their speakers traverse Manhattan streets, weather storms in Chad, and navigate Long Island Sound, are for minds in transit, offering “an emptying / the chest hollowed out” (“Autumn Song”) and acceptance for what was and what will not be. “Of all the body / the hands ache the most,” Lieber writes; “The hands reach out / and float, the fingers kneading / the air in random rhythm, as if remembering / the first time absence had a face” (“New Suffolk”). As readers, we all have that face committed to the mind’s eye, made all the more beautiful because it will never be seen again.
A penetrating, measured group of poems exploring wonder, emotion, and the ways the world moves us.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781666768688
Page Count: 90
Publisher: Resource Publications
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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