U of Ideas of General Interest -- June 1999
Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor
(217) 333-2177; [email protected]
LITERATURE
Poet's latest collection reflects spiritual magic he feels in exotic isles
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Surely nowhere is poetry a more transporting medium than in the work of Laurence Lieberman. Nearly every poem in his latest volume, "The Regatta in the Skies: Selected Long Poems" (University of Georgia Press), is a voyage to an exotic island landscape. The journeys take him to coral reefs and to leper huts, certainly not always Paradisiacal, but always evocative of the magical worlds of the Caribbean -- and Japan -- that over the past 20 years have bewitched the soul of the poet.
In Lieberman's eye, island places glitter, glint and sparkle. A distant hillside village becomes a lit jack-o'-lantern's carved face, and ceramic roof tiles wink at tourists through gaps in passing clouds. Yet, in his physical world, people also are repositories of sparkle and magic.
"I almost hesitate to say this because it's so strange, almost bizarre, but when I'm in the Caribbean traveling around, it's all so magical for me," Lieberman said. "I find people who teach me things, who become my soul mates. A kind of spiritual rapport develops that's just uncanny."
In one poem, the narrator, while snorkeling, spies a few cubic milliliters of plankton. "Minuscule/acrobatics whirl in refracted light, the tiny lives/spinning upon themselves --/ dazzle to dim, sparkle to fade -- dancing and effervescing/ luminous as fireflies." In another poem, he meets two lepers, their sweet faces "cameos of taut beautyÖ. But O how amazed they/still are Ö /when small flesh slugs disengage, oddly,/from hands or feet -- at chance moments/of wakeup from light sleeps."
The Caribbean has maintained a powerful hold on Lieberman since he went there 35 years ago to teach college. He has said that his spiritual life as a poet virtually began there and that his writer-soul remains "entrenched" there. An English professor at the University of Illinois since 1968, Lieberman is a celebrated author of 11 volumes of poetry.
He said that while he usually bases his poetry on actual experiences, he tries not to think about the poems he may eventually write during the experiences. Rather, he wants the material he later "might use for art to be totally unknown," he said. In addition, he comes upon metaphor "mostly by accident, by luck: You wait for the experience to throw up those metaphors spontaneously."
In general, Lieberman said, poets "want the life of the spirit to have its own free run." For him, "poetry writing and most any kind of writing is a healing process. It helps me to become whole again."
Still, while he writes "for the sheer joy of it," he concedes that pain is often a byproduct "because you're struggling for something and you have no idea if it's going to work. But you don't want any guarantees. You want to take gambles, to stretch yourself. If you play it safe and it works then it hasn't been a real challenge." Lieberman will be one of 25 poets to be collected next year in the anthology "Influence and Mastery." A 12th volume of his poems, "Flight From the Mother Stone," will be published by University of Arkansas Press in January 2000.
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