M. L. Liebler Books

Detroit, Mo-town, city of automobile and industry, vibrant or dying? This book of wonderful poetry written by Detroit poets during the early and late 20th century is alive with feeling and emotion both specific to this working-class town and yet also universal in its appeal to the humanity and emotion in all of us. Detroiters and former Detroiters will recognize the people and places in these poems with specificity. They will have been there and lived these emotions. But so too will have anyone who has lived in any community that has felt the excitement and the hurt of change, both local and in society as a whole.
This book collects the poetry of over 100 poets with an enormity of diverse backgrounds and voices yet all with the common bond of having been a Detroiter. They reflect this yet also reflect a broader bond that we all have in our common humanity. The poems are generally short and easy to read. Pick up the book, flip it open to any page and begin reading. You will feel the honesty and clarity with which the poets write and likely these poems will stir up some very realistic feelings that have been buried deep within you. This poetry will help you to see within the soul of a city and its people whose microcosm may represent us all.

This poetry compilation achieves its goal by capturing whatever it means to be "Detroit". I sometimes close myself in a room and read loudly poems from this book to the wall just to remember what it feels like to live in an area not built on doubletalk (I live in Washington DC now).

I could never speak to whether this book would appeal to somebody who doesn't understand Detroit's turbulent life over the 20th century. I would certainly tell anybody who asked that they should at least flip through this book every so often because it tells the story of America, its pinnacles of glory and how they can get ripped right out from underneath without a moment's notice.

The poetry in 'Abandon Automobile' is beautifully visceral. There are no "thou"s or sappy sonnets about flowers in this book. It may seem simple and plain to people more accustomed to coffeeshop poetry, but it isn't once you let the words meld together. Much like Detroit is defined by what many people have done as a collective rather than what any particular individuals have done, these words together form Detroit. The language is practical, impassioned, riddled with strife and hope and somehow happiness. It has stories told through the grit of abandoned sidewalks that were once the busiest in the world, but now only support a couple averted-eye strangers passing one another.

Everyone I know who understands Detroit lives with an uneasy love / hate for it. It is the love of the automobile mixed with an utter disdain for what it has done to destroy its own city. This poetry captures that. The poems throw up an impassioned defense for all Detroit has quietly contributed to society and reveals a deep rooted frustration over its potential in a world that no longer cares about it.

Anyway - even if you've never found yourself saying 'Detroit' over and over until its images were wiped away and it settled deep in your throat as an entirely new and strange word, read this poetry. Some are better than most, but you'll find the really good ones and you'll find Detroit.

M. L. Liebler's Written in the Rain is a beautiful collection of moving and musical poetry sure to rock your socks. Liebler commands a beat that entices you to be rebellious if you are the most prudent. The best two words to describe his poems are "alive" and "kicking." Myself, I enjoyed the first and second part of the anthology, Whispers by the Lawn (I and II) and Breaking the Voodoo. These two parts of the book I feel are the strongest parts because they break you into the feel of Liebler's poems and they keep you thinking throughout the rest of the book. The other parts have their strengths also, but I simply enjoyed the sick rawness of the first two. Plus, all my favorites are in the first two sections. My absolute favorite is In My Spring which alludes to a sadness and regret of the loss of youth and the tiny immeasurable things that you loved then. In this regret, it is catalyzed to rapture because he remembers that there are still so many things left to love and still so much more time to do it, and not too late, just at the end of his woeful tirade. "I may never, again, pluck simple berries/ Taste backyard mud/ Stick my shoes in fresh rain water/ Drag them across laundryroom tiles." This eventually leads into the realization that yes, I am grown up and it is no longer appropriate to carry on like a child, but I still remember and that gives me hope. I love how Liebler is a ranting lover of the arts and how he shows it through his poems about Woodstock, the lost love generation, and drug use. He encompasses his entire being into this book: going through childhood, the gangliness of adolescence, rebellion, art, love, beauty, the union workers, America, Vietnam, and so much more. If you like jazz or art or poetry, or even if you don't, you will enjoy this volume simply because you can't not like it. It has an infectious beat that will keep you reading page after page.

Having heard M. L. Liebler read and perform his poetry with his Magic Poetry Band, it is hard to get his performing beat out of your head when you read, Written in the Rain. The poems in Written on the Rain are pure hard hat and lunch pail examples of the American working population. I love the poem Allan Ginsberg's Dead. It speaks to the heart of Liebler's poetry. A man who worked, loved and died without any recognition, but is the backbone of America's success. A Bag of Catsup, And I Ain't Never Going to see Bobby Rush No More and Bass Beat Blues are all poems that show the twenty-year journey Liebler has taken through life and with his poetry. His topics include Vietnam, Unions, Baseball and Christ. A must read for those of you with the Midwest in your blood.

this book echoes off Detroit hard urban scene with a lot of Generation Nam sensibility bouncing the words like hard handgrenades of hope and longing against the angsty nothingness of so much performance-po-try-- instead let the mic master from D town's pages flip the script in your hands as if filling your ears with cool songs.