A History of the Sweetness of the World

A History of the Sweetness of the World compels us to consider the world we live in. Michael Lieberman is a physician-poet who, from the vantage of middle age, has given us a book that celebrates and savors even as it documents loss and judges.

The pace of American life in the nineties has left us frayed. We live in a divided and divisive world with little time to heal it or ourselves. This book challenges us to heal by locating the sweet and the bitter-sweet even as we recognize the bitter. The poet "would get down on his hands and knees and thank God for color vision," even as he despairs of having "brailleless beggars in the streets."

This is a book about sweetness in which poems have titles like "Loss" and "Regret" as well as "Lucky." The book also contains poems that are mysterious, that cannot be grasped in a simple way: "Extraction" and "Eleven Views of the Bayou at Chimney Rock" with its quiet homage to Paul Celan can only be experienced. Like the world itself there is no rational, logical summary of these poems. The poems in this collection are written about our world—our only world—and the only way we can heal it or ourselves is to be fully present. To experience it completely, we must step back from it. We are fortunate to have these poems to help us.