Hour of the Mango Black Moon

Laurence Lieberman is an amazingly prolific writer whose distinctive and memorable narrative poems have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly. Although Lieberman is not Caribbean by birth, his work often focuses on this region which he grew to love while teaching English for four years (1964-1968) at the newly formed College of the Virgin Islands on St. Thomas. His recent book of poems, Flight from the Mother Stone (2000), was reviewed in Volume 14 of The Caribbean Writer (259-60). Now, in his latest collection, Hour of the Mango Black Moon, the master poet and narrative storyteller celebrates the work of three outstanding Caribbean visual artists: Stanley Greaves from Guyana and two younger men Greaves has profoundly influenced, Ras Akyem Ramsey and Ras Ishi Butcher, both from Barbados.

Hour of the Mango Black Moon is illustrated with eighteen color plates of paintings by these artists -- eight by Greaves, six by Ras Akyem and four by Ras Ishi. The publisher, Peepal Tree Press, has done an outstanding job of ensuring that the quality of the plates matches the high quality of the poetry. It is not surprising that such a consummate craftsman as Laurence Lieberman is drawn to the work of fellow poet and legendary artist Stanley Greaves. It is Greaves who wrote in the catalogue notes for a 1994 exhibition, "There is no excuse for not pursuing mastery of technique." And in a recent article for Caribbean Beat by his biographer, Rupert Roopnaraine, Greaves
elaborated:

Too many individuals talk about their intentions and no amount of sincerity will give the work the power it deserves. Natural ability is not enough. . . It has to be informed and supported by sound technique. . .searching for an easy way is a waste of time. (www.metappublishers.com/online/caribbeanbeat/current issue/article.ph?i
d=cb72-1 -38 ).

Both statements articulate the same dedication to the mastery of their art evidenced by Ras Akyem, Ras Ishi; and Laurence Lieberman. When Lieberman won a fellowship allowing him to study a second discipline, he chose to concentrate on cultural anthropology. Honing the tools of observation, interviewing and collecting oral histories, he immersed himself in Caribbean art, reading, traveling, talking and listening, studying the original pieces of visual artists he admired, until he was convinced he "was lifted out of my limits of heritage".

Lieberman's immersion has resulted in a set of unique poems typographically arranged to create flowing visual patterns -- orbs, hourglasses, and sensuous curves that might be rivers -- or snakes. These "inventive shapes" contain words as powerful as any of the sculptures or paintings Lieberman interprets, as they "catch the myriad / flux of colors in ever- / shifting light, and keep you gasping at rainbow / display" ("Hour of the Mango Black Moon," 59).

It is interesting, and a little puzzling, that the title poem of the collection, "Hour of the Mango Black Moon," is not a response to Stanly Greaves' wonderful painting Banana Manna #2, featured on the cover. Instead, "Hour of the Mango Black Moon" (59-62) discusses Greaves' painting Morning Mangoes. In this piece (see the plate facing 59), Greaves has created a man and a woman whose electric-green bodies are composed of "comic. . .globular limbs," "composites / of elongated mango shapes." They stand facing each other, knee deep in a sun-streaked sea, their hands full of red and yellow mangoes, while "a cryptic black oval, / shaped like a gigantic mango, rests / on the distant sea." The poet speculates, "It could be the moon, its color reversed." The poem includes a phrase which reveals the tone of Lieberman's entire collection, which "smack(s) of. . .lures / and enigmas. . ." (59).

Lieberman does pay tribute to Greaves' cover painting Banana Manna #2 (see the color plate opposite 49) in two poems, "Magus With Reverse Bananas," originally published in Volume 18 of The Caribbean Writer (54-57), and "Fable of Sky-Borne Bananas" (49). "Magus with Reverse Bananas" is perhaps the more whimsical poem, an intricate dance of political and biographical references, with detailed passages about the island shaman's mystical fruit. But the opening phrase of Lieberman's "Fable of Sky-borne Bananas" (49) best expresses the predominant mood of Greaves' painting: "Stoic and serene;" "all colors of the portrait / but one. . .low-keyed and quiet." The dark figure in blue with his back to the viewer represents not only a "farmer" and a "cook" but also a "holy man or seer" to whom bananas are "no ordinary / soil-begotten fruit" but instead represent "Manna, food for angels," as well as for God's chosen people. The engaging passion or illuminating wonder of the painting, however, is provided by a single object, the mystical chef's scarlet hat with its streaming banner, "so torrid and eye- / affronting. . .it belongs / to another world." This hat conveys exactly the right "shock of contrast" to take us "up and away from visible / setting into the unseeable stratosphere, just / one short mind jump beyond" (49¬53). In Lieberman's view, Greaves is an artists who inspires us to take a leap of transcendent faith and insight.

But Greaves' Magus is not the only powerfully evocative figure in Hour of the Mango Black Moon. The poet finds Ras Akyem's depiction of the Old Testament prophet, Daniel, another source of inspiration and awe. "The Grandeur of Foot Soles" is Lieberman's response to Ras Akyem's vivid abstract painting of Daniel, in prison for "sinning" against King Darius (87-90). Again, the tone of both painting and poem are mystical. Like Greaves' Magus, Ras Akyem's Daniel is a man of visions, passion and surprise. "Glarily lit" stained glass hues of blue, purple, brown, magenta, red reveal a gaunt and naked prophet, threatened by "hissing snakes" and "encircled by various instruments / of torture," as he defies the imperial decree forbidding him to pray to the one real God. "Noble and true," Daniel kneels with his tricolored, mask-like face lifted; his gnarled arms raised and intertwined, "hugging the invisible loveliness" of "light." Yet it seems to his captors "bound. . .to a realm of banal fact," their prisoner is foolishly "hugging a void." "But oh," the poet instructs us, "it is the unseen / Beloved, the rich bounty of our days." Like the Magus in Greaves' painting, Ras Akyem's Daniel "vouchsafes an emblem -- a shape -- for rapture. . ."

As does the "lonely tranced / Being on the free-floating cos¬mos" of Ras Ishi's "fiery and pulsing. . .Mindscape." "Marooned," (113) is one of Lieberman's most moving and delicate poems in Hour of the Mango Black Moon, written in response to Ras Ishi's ethereal self-portrait Isolation (see the plate facing 113). "The space of himself," the poet writes of the central, free-floating visage the artist depicts, "is invaded / by sparkly points & slivers & jewels / of varicolored lights" that might be "celestial luminaries of night- / sky pageant." Yet the face retains a "palpable vision," an "Austere / calm gaze" which reveals his "transparency. . .can contain" and even "command / the abyss of star clusters." Indeed, Lieberman concludes, this painting represents man as a "guiding
center / to galaxies... his emptiness filled with riches of jeweled other worlds." Like Stanley Greaves' Magus and Ras Akyem's prophet, this figure too is a symbol of daring hope and enduring vision in our dark, often blinded world, for he "has voyaged from finding / himself lost to losing himself found, at a single cosmic leap" (113-115).