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 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.
My job?
To give you lessons in strength and grief.

Read Third Temple for its rich musicality and wise meditations on gender, politics, and the requirements of the moral life.

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.