Customer Reviews

Sublimation Point

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Sublimation Point was a revelation. I didn't know anyone wrote real poetry anymore-poems about real things that are real poems, with formal structures that support the meaning, with music and clarity, with a reason to be a poem instead of, say, a shopping list or a greeting card. Jason Schneiderman writes real poems, and Sublimation Point is full of them: lyrical and probing and beautiful and sad and funny and true. I read it in one sitting, then turned to the front and began reading again, this time slowly, over time. I go back to particular ones-The Disease Collector; Anatomy I and II; Proposals for a Holocaust Memorial, on Display at MOMA-because of how they say what they say. And others-The Unnaming; Crit; Physics III: Super Powers-because they make me smile. And then there are the ones that just amaze me: the Crown series, and especially the title poem. Sublimation Point is astonishing. It reminded me what poetry is for. And Jason Schneiderman is a real poet.

Deceptively simple with direct, clearly written lines and narratives, these poems reward the reader with profound insights into what it was like to be a gay boy entering sexual maturity at a bizarre time: (1) the height of the AIDS crisis, (2) the Reagan years of cultural denial concerning anything gay, (3) the indomitable spirit of gay leaders who fought on for equality that couldn't happen in their lifetime. Schneiderman's poems have a wistful, sweet quality, even a gentleness that belies their stories. Take, for instance, this one, the first segment of a longer poem called "Crown":

God loves an expiration date
and lord knows we've got ours -

except that you're winning - Late
in the game, like those flowers

we thought I'd killed, but came
back with water: one last lame

leaf holding out hope. I want to believe
that you will live because to grieve

is not my lot, but I know
that it has nothing to do with me

and that just as Orpheus lost Eurydice,
God could make me watch you go.

Tell me, love, whom to thank for protease inhibitors.
Nothing rhymes with protease inhibitors.

The reader feels the angst and naïve cynicism of this still-innocent, helpless boy as he copes with his helplessness, the tenuous hold his lover has on life, the meanness of our culture's chosen God, and the hollow miracle of protease inhibitors.

Or how about his careful use of humor to mask anguish in his skillfully crafted, modified English sonnet entitled "The Disease Collector"?

Odd word: culture, as though this swab cared
About art and music, loved the opera,
Saw the Ballet Russe when Nijinksy still bared
His chest, could quote the illuminata
In the original Italian. As though this petri dish
Were a center of learning, and parents wished
For their children to go there, like Harvard or Yale,
As though a positive answer would not pale
My cheeks, or force me to wholly rearrange
My life around pills and doctor's visits;
Force me to find old lovers and tricks,
Warn that their bodies may too grow strange;
To play the old game of who gave it to whom,
Gently lowering voices, alone in one's room.

I understand Schneiderman teaches creative writing at Hofstra University. I hope his students appreciate him, pay attention to him, and understand how lucky they are.

I highly recommend this book of excellent poems. I can't keep a copy in my house because I keep giving it to discerning friends.
Jason Schneiderman's poems are beautiful and hilarious, sad and intelligent. I've read some of them hundreds of times.
A rare gift to read such a powerful book of poems.