Third Temple (2007)
Synopsis
A house on a leaf is a precarious and fanciful construction, yet it gracefully covers the leaves of Richard Chess's third book of poetry, Third Temple. Painted by Edita Pollaková, a child caught in the dislocation and catastrophe of the Holocaust, this watercolor preserves an audacioius, innocent vision of structure and renewal against all odds. It is just such structure and renewal that Chess's poems seek as they sing, shout, whisper, accuse, tease, twist, and mourn. Animal sacrifice and blood libel, the Zohar and Solomon ibn Gabirol and Tevye set them going. Languages, too, for some of the poems include Hebrew as they sing of the scattering of kingdoms, the disspelling of names, and the "aleph bet" of being. No ordinary temple, this book. Let it challenge and delight you with language lessons that won't leave.
Reviews
From Image: A Journal of Art, Faith and Mystery
The great gift of Richard Chess's poetry is that it reminds us of the earthiness of language—its sounds and shapes, the way it bears the marks of history and geography. His work conveys a palpable sense of the landscape of Israel and Palestine and its beauties and horrors, both ancient and modern.
Chess's latest collection, Third Temple, explores the postmodern diaspora that threatens to pull the speakers in these poems free from the past, and those physical and spiritual origins. But they are tenacious, listening hard to their own histories of loss to find a hard-won, and often playful, rootedness in tradition. The utopian vision of raising the temple a third time gets a tweak on the nose by the suggestion of a modern blood sacrifice: not a sheep or dove, but Leon, the speakers' "unblemished chocolate lab." A joke, but also a deadly serious yearning to offer one's best and holiest to God: "I will shake with shame because Leon is all I have / ... but the Lord / deserves more than his extended paw." Also tangible in these poems is the sense that we are, thankfully, never free of what has come before us. Out of the wreckage of the Holocaust, an archivist takes up the "pain- / staking process" of repairing a scroll of Scripture that has somehow survived, a spark from the past that "ignite[s] the paper / Torah of her heart." Language is the anchor for these poems throughout.
In Chess's cosmology, language is more than a system of symbols. It is sacred, supernatural, formidable. Chess engages the ancient Hebraic tradition in which the true name of God cannot be spoken or written, and in his work we recover that sense of reverence, a fear and trembling before the power a word can wield. A woman scribe is brought up short attempting to write the Name, "caught on the barb / of infinity." Says the teacher of Hebrew, "That explosion you hear from afar? / It's my heart that has been in exile too long. / ... My job? / To give you lessons in strength and grief." Words hold the weight of the past and of identity. To us modern types, for whom words are often ephemeral or pixilated, this is a bracing truth to bump up against.
From Robin Becker
Playful and erudite, irreverent and prayerful, Rick Chess's new poems speak to post-modern exile, taking up the timeless Jewish themes of freedom and slavery. Declaring himself 'descendant of a fickle, querulous, ragtag crew in Sinai,' Chess honors and re-invigorates tradition with his own 'Kaddish,' 'Monotheist's Lament,' 'Psalm,' and 'Traveler's Prayer.' He incorporates Hebrew letters and words in one sequence of poems, concluding 'Language Lesson' with the lines:
I am your Hebrew teacher.Read Third Temple for its rich musicality and wise meditations on gender, politics, and the requirements of the moral life.
My job?
To give you lessons in strength and grief.
From Alicia Ostriker
What is Third Temple? Is it stand-up poetry/tragedy/liturgy/hilarity or sorrow? Is it poetry of harrowing hope? Is it a message from 'doubt's house' and is it 'lessons in strength and grief?' Is it Jewish to the bone, and theologically incorrect? Yes, all of the above, and by God, I hope God is listening.
From Ilan Stavans
By conjuring the magic of the Hebrew alphabet, Richard Chess engages in a conversation with Jewish writers dead and alive, from the biblical psalmist and the anonymous Qumran scribe to the disfigured Iberian poet Solomon ibn Gabirol and the oracular Sholem Aleichem and the pungent Elie Wiesel. Hear their voices and see their concoctions parade through these pages: it's the fickle, querulous, ragtag crew from Mount Sinai. Chess congregates them all in preparation for the building of the Third Temple, a place which, like Xanadu, is only reachable in dreams.
From Mountain Xpress
Poet Richard Chess, in his day job, directs the Center for Jewish Studies at UNCA. And while Third Temple, his third book of poetry, is hardly a textbook-dry primer for impressionable students, Chess does allow his professorial voice to come through from the outset—but perhaps most noticeably in the collection’s final poems, which explore the intricacies of the Hebrew alphabet. Even in his most personal poems of love, grief, spiritual grappling, sexuality and death, Chess asserts his role as an usher of sorts, guiding the uninitiated into the language and multilayered textures of the Torah.
Can a non-Jew truly relate to Temple? Hard to say. But the openness of the book, the spaciousness and light quality of poetry, allows a reader some access. Temple is one man’s journey to understanding his own religion and culture, but it’s also an invitation to the greater world.
The book opens with a seemingly lighthearted poem about Chess’ faithful brown Lab. There’s a Mark Strand quality to the writing, a frivolity belying a deeper, darker truth: the unconditionally loving canine as both metaphor for our supposed obedience to God and juxtaposition against a cruel deity.
But it’s the happy-go-lucky dog that wins the reader.
Temple uses the exclusive syntax of Jewish prayers. But charmingly self-effacing lines like “if I weren’t a Jew I could be / comic without being tragic,” and the jazzy poem “Rabbi Gets Around,” make Temple a fast-paced read. As is likely true of Chess’ teaching style, the book is friendly, up-front, and real. And on-par with America’s best contemporary poets.