Dan Liberthson, Ph.D., has written a remarkable book, a series of lyrical and powerful poems that tell the story of his youth and maturation in a Jewish immigrant family in upstate New York. Sly and comedic portraits of aunts, uncles, and grandparents vie with darker material, including an astonishingly rich sequence of poems about his relation to his younger, schizophrenic, sister, and the dramatic effect of her illness on him and his parents. Many of the poems are based on striking family photos from the 1940s and 1950s, 12 of which are included in the book. Other visual material includes several abstract graphic designs that explore the overall theme of the labyrinth of the family, and a full-color cover. This handsome package also includes two CDs with a high-quality recording of Liberthson, a trained and compelling vocal interpreter, reading the entire book. For those unused to reading poetry, who want to hear the expressive voice of the author interpreting the book, and who want the convenience of listening as they drive or rest their eyes, these CDs are an invaluable bonus. For further information, please visit Dan's website at Liberthson.com.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
In every family, love comes with costs that we pay for the rest of our lives. We can pay these costs blindly and repeatedly, to our great harm, or we can attempt an honest accounting of them. Dan Liberthson's poetry embodies this second, braver choice. With its quiet tone, spare language, and compelling imagery, his work confirms the mysterious capacity of poetry to hurt in order to heal, to push us from that dead zone of vague unease toward the kind of clarity that can move our lives forward. By avoiding the unhelpful fog of cheap sentiment and easy nostalgia, these poems offer keys--terrifyingly honest but strangely beautiful--to the reader's healing. --Jeffrey Hammond, George B. and Willma Reeves Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of English, St. Mary's College of Maryland
This powerful poetry unflinchingly portrays the impact of a mentally ill sibling on a perfectionistic American Jewish family. Interwoven with word-portraits of charismatic relatives painted from charmig childhood and discerning adult viewpoints, the story of the struggle to survive and mature out of the cauldron of nuclear family tension will appeal to anyone who has suffered and surmounted a difficult early family life. --Deborah L. Radzwill, PsyD, Licensed Psychologist
Dan Liberthson's poems speak of grief and healing, of sadness and epiphany, in his connection with and disconnection from an extended family that leaves him both broken and whole. --Alice Rogoff, Editor, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, San Francisco
This powerful poetry unflinchingly portrays the impact of a mentally ill sibling on a perfectionistic American Jewish family. Interwoven with word-portraits of charismatic relatives painted from charmig childhood and discerning adult viewpoints, the story of the struggle to survive and mature out of the cauldron of nuclear family tension will appeal to anyone who has suffered and surmounted a difficult early family life. --Deborah L. Radzwill, PsyD, Licensed Psychologist
Dan Liberthson's poems speak of grief and healing, of sadness and epiphany, in his connection with and disconnection from an extended family that leaves him both broken and whole. --Alice Rogoff, Editor, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, San Francisco
About the Author
At the turn of the millenium, in the year 2000, Dan Liberthson, a lifelong poet and writer with a PhD in English (SUNY at Buffalo, 1975), turned 50 years old. These two events sent him an unmistakable message: time is passing, better get done what you need to get done. Over the next 6 years, using albums of family photographs as his inspiration, he worked at what he felt was his most important task: to make a poetic revitalization and reckoning of his Jewish American childhood, which was deeply affected by a schizophrenic younger sister he both loved and rejected. A Family Album tells the story of that life with schizophrenia, and its harsh and poignant effects on a family unprepared to cope with such a problem. The love in that family was put under great strain by the illness, and was often expressed obliquely or in some form of aggression rather than by mildness. Extended family members, somewhat sheltered from the daily storms, were the only undistorted outlet for affection. So, A Family Album explores in poetry not only the tragic effects of the illness, but also the joy of the love for these more distant witnesses, aunts, uncles, nephews. This book will reward anyone who has had a family experience of mental illness or wants to know what that can be like, as well as readers interested in American Jewish culture and those simply looking for powerful, well-wrought poetry.
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