Tebot Bach

99 pp./$15

Paul Lieber- a student of Method acting- has spent most of his adult life playing tough-guy roles on Broadway and in Hollywood. He played Eric Dorsey in the TV series Barney Miller and has also appeared in many other shows, including Dallas, The X-Files and Law and Order. Now he has come out with a collection of poems that reveal his tender side, which is on display whether he is remembering his growing-up years on the streets of New York City, his long career as an actor, his more recent years as the father of a young son or, tragically, as the brother of a woman dying prematurely of cancer. All through this book, the tone is conversational, the style seemingly effortless, the humor smart and sly. Here, as in many poetry collections, the most memorable poems come near the beginning, so let us build up to them by making our way backwards in this volume, and considering first the sections devoted to a dying woman and a growing child, before concluding with Lieber’s most individual contributions.

In “Sister,” he describes, in frank detail, moments in the early years of his relationship with his sister: 

I’d surrender on the toilet where

the light was strongest. She above me,

searching. She pinched, tweaked.

The blackhead lifted. Precision pressed

on to neck side, ear lobe, a lung or two.

She’d wipe dead cells on my hand.

A cotton ball dipped in alcohol slammed

pores shut.

This passage is especially poignant since it is the only poem in the collection in which the sister is portrayed as the caregiver; usually it is the brother (the narrator) who must care for her, much later in life, when she is stricken with cancer. These pieces about the sister make up the book’s last section, and they are memorable for their unpretentiousness and eloquence. In “We Think” Lieber writes: 

Each day

the phone rings with all the love

she couldn’t feel.

The eulogy starts before

they lower the body.

Praise heaped

in the hope to keep

her above the boxwoods

in the nurturing cries

as years run into minutes,

as mobility stills. Continue reading →