Red Letter Poem #265

 The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #265

 

 

 

The Wicked Witch of the West

Goes to Seattle



I wasn’t always like this. As a girl, I loved

The shower, my wet hair heavy on my shoulders,

The warm soapy water on my back and legs.

It wasn’t like now, with fear and bitterness.

When I got my power, no one told me

I would have to sacrifice something,

And not of my choosing, which is why

When I received my talent during a thunderstorm—

You know the rest. My skin turned green from lament,

And I have come here to risk oblivion,

To sink into what I loved for so long, the one

Element that could return my heart to me.

I stare out the window at the rain pouring down

But have not yet decided how I will do it.

Will I run to the coffee shop next door, acting

Like I forgot my umbrella? Then take my

Hat off and stand under the edge

Of the awning and let the water drip

On my bare head? To feel my body

Run down itself until I am nothing

But what I have missed for so long.

To flow in a direction I don’t yet know,

But which no one can change,

Or ever take away.


––Jack Stewart



I know what you’re thinking: a little late, isn’t it? Why didn’t Steven run this poem back in March, when the Academy Awards were all abuzz with Jon Chu’s movie and, at the drop of a pointy hat, audiences couldn’t help but belt out: “I think I'll try/Defying gravity!” It’s true, I do on occasion tie Red Letter poems to seasons and cultural events, making real life the backdrop for a literary experience. And I’ll admit it: that was my plan all along when I first received Jack Stewart’s surprising poem about the possibility of washing a life free of its history, and transforming it into something new. But then I feared that it would be subsumed in the overarching drama of Broadway and Hollywood––the rather grand spectacle that Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel has unleashed on popular culture. Maguire’s brilliant idea was to shift our perspective on L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, and consider what made the Wicked Witch wicked in the first place. Such a dramatic lineage resulted: from Baum’s turn-of-the-century classic to numerous plays, other books, movies, musicals, and even now to this poem. It’s more than a little thrilling to witness one artistic vision demonstrating the generative power of cultural crosspollination. So I decided to wait, wanting readers to have a clean slate (or as much as that’s ever possible) when Jack’s more modest vision––stripped of stage lights and orchestration––first stepped out onto their inner stage.



From the very first, I loved the poet’s recasting of this little mythology, setting it into a contemporary American landscape which we all inhabit. I remember, when I was twenty, California was brimming with its ‘Summer of Love’ (younger readers: Google it), and I hitchhiked cross-country to experience my generation's version of Oz. For young people in recent decades, Seattle and the Pacific Northwest seem to have been cast with that same aura of possibility. So who exactly is this woman Jack’s introducing us to––perhaps leaving behind a hot and arid place (like, say, Jack’s South Florida) and lighting out for the West (a decidedly greener and rainier terrain)? And what’s caused her aversion to the cleansing/comforting power of a warm shower? Did you find yourself considering all the ways this once-happy girl might have come to feel her life sullied? Or was that “power” she’s attained simply the change from innocence to womanhood, with all the apprehensions brought on by her life in a society where a woman’s autonomy can be challenged by the male powers-that-be? And so she’s journeyed to a locale where precipitation is a common occurrence––“come here to risk oblivion,/ To sink into what I loved for so long…”. Reading (no, thinking her thoughts) through this persona poem, I began feeling the many ways my own life has calcified, grown comfortable in its old ways––even while knowing how certain elements were never ‘in the plan’ and may not be conducive to furthering my dreams. This woman is willing to risk a kind of dissolution––“until I am nothing/ But what I have missed for so long”––and I’m left wondering what I’d be willing to risk in order “To flow in a direction I don’t yet know,/ But which no one can change…”. Our protagonist’s skin turned green from lament; mine might be more out of envy.



Jack has become a frequent contributor to the Red Letters. Formerly a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology, he now teaches writing in Fort Lauderdale at the Pine Crest School. His first collection, No Reason, was published in the Poeima Poetry Series in 2020. New work has appeared in numerous literary journals like Poetry, the New York Quarterly, and the Iowa Review, garnering nine nominations for the Pushcart Prize. I love how, in his poetry, Jack twists situations, charges syntax, and continually defies expectations––anything to keep the reading experience fresh. I can easily imagine his protagonist, beneath the cataract descending that shop awning, feeling herself reborn into a wholly new circumstance. Is she singing to herself: “Something has changed within me/ Something is not the same…”? Or maybe she’s more old school and––watching gulls and osprey angling through the downpour, heading back toward the sea––she’s awaiting the rainbow which must surely come. Is she entertaining the possibility of wings to carry her beyond all expectation, maybe thinking: “Why, oh why can't I?

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

And coming soon:

a new website to house all the Red Letter archives at StevenRatiner.com

 

Somerville Poet Michael Franco: Composing the life in which we are living

Recently I caught up with Somerville poet Michael Franco. Michael Franco is a poet, playwright and artist. His publications include: The Marvels of David Leering [Pressed Wafer 2017] A Book of Measure Volume One: The Journals of the Man who Keeps Bees [Talisman House 2017] How To Live [Zoland, Cambridge Ma. 1998]. He was the founder of the Word of Mouth Readings Series in Cambridge Ma. and was a board member for the Pioneer Valley Poetry Festival. He is currently a Visiting Writer for the University of Coimbra, Portugal and curator of the Xit The Bear reading series in Somerville MA

 How has it been for you as a poet and writer living in Somerville?

I got lucky in our move to Somerville...... it has given and allowed me to construct a sense of Place... always missing from my Navy Brat life... I have now lived here longer than in any of the residences my parents and I had (we moved 11 times before I graduated high school - in 5th grade I went to 3 different schools). Somerville has been a grand location to work in, raise a child in and to attempt acts of Community in.

_________________----

Tell me about the genesis of your the XIT The Bear Room Series. Your first readers were William Corbett, Fanny Howe, and Gerrit Lansing—all have passed.... Howe most recently. What kind of legacy did these poets leave?—who did you identify with the most?

The new reading series [Xit the Bear: Readings in The Press Room] was planned before we started looking for a home in the late 90’s. I wanted to create a space ...away from a campus, library or bar, that might be inviting for writers to read in and so then to Respect the readers and their work and the audience as well.

I ran the Word of Mouth Series in Cambridge for close to ten years (in the Henderson Carriage Building beneath Tapas restaurant at 2067 Mass Ave.[1987-95 & then at various locations until ‘97]): Originally with artist Katha Seidman who lured the artists, (who were shown with each reading) and Andrea Stover who read manuscripts with me and dealt with the bar. [Over the years Joseph Torra and Angie Mlinko would follow her on the bar]: each in their way essential to the atmosphere created. But it was always by the generosity of Polly Guggenheim and Glen Matsura who handed me the downstairs bar to use for free on Sundays. We had a great run: Readers from Bill Corbett to Diane di Prima & Robin Blaser, Nathaniel Tarn, Lee Harwood, David Rattray, Kenward Elmslie, CD Wright & Forrest Gander, Fanny Howe of course, Nate Macke, Ken Irby & Robert Creeley; basically every one I could hope for in between. I did afternoon readings of Stein and Spicer texts which I scored for the voices of poets whom I admired, plays, a text built from the combined correspondence between Olson, Creeley and Cid

Corman (Bill Corbett reading the Olson part) held benefits and hung art by local artists .. I even convinced Mike Mazur to hang reproductions of his Dante prints when Robert Pinsky read (& wonderfully) from his then new Translation. Bill Corbett recorded his grand book On Blue Note for Cambridge’s Zoland Books & Roland Pease down there... but it all hinged on the restaurant and when they closed up we got maybe two weeks notice. The last reading was a jazz band made up of Clark Coolidge and David & Tina Meltzer with Andrew Schelling and Anne Waldman the week before...it was a grand place to stop... but it left a lot hanging & I vowed a better place if there was a next time where only I could pull the plug.

In projecting a new series I wanted to both continue my original proposal for Word of Mouth [which I kept calling “an Oral Magazine” which I was editing and a “A Place to Practice”]. But I wanted now to be in control of the space & to make it a Place in the imagination where one might actually want to read sans Saturday Night’s stale beer overtones! So the Press Room was built in our former Somerville Garage (slightly delayed by the joyous intrusion of our son’s birth & life) & I started putting away $25.00 a week from tips so that eventually I could actually pay the readers, and from that the Xit The Bear reading series emerged which takes place there along with other events (Somerville poet and filmmaker John Mulrooney recently brought his Rusty Doves band in for a small & wonderful show & I have the occasional writer in residence out there. In between I continue with my restoration of a 19th C Hand Press & attempt to relearn 19th C printing techniques or do my work in collage. When I am done with this interview I am heading out there to pull proofs on what I hope will be a small broadside of an H.D. poem and a short text by Robert Duncan.)

All of this I have to say (to get back to yr actual question) was grounded by Bill Corbett (who I describe nowadays as a silent partner to the first Series (a concept which would make him flinch I think) but Bill sent people my way whom I would not have been in touch with and Bill respected what I was doing (even if he disagreed with it) because he sensed my Intention at work... and he Never complained if I took a pass on a writer.) He was indeed Word of Mouth’s and Xit’s first reader: Solo at Word and then for the Xit reading I paired him with Gerrit Lansing as an Opening.

At Xit putting him up with Gerrit Lansing was a conscious declaration of the poetics of the series: No Masters no manifestos, as indeed lift had quietly proposed: Just Poets of deep commitment, at work at the height of their capabilities... whose example was boundless Curiosity and Joy- Nothing more nothing less: But always Companions to the all rest of us trying to pop our heads out into View in the poetry world; they were Certainly not writers who were looking for power or position or to form a group or school. I am coming to see that period as a New Boston Renaissance with spiraling connections to San

Francisco/Berkeley via myself Robin Blazer & Nate Mackey and a broad field of active deeply caring poets like Ms Howe, Robert Pinsky, Askhold Melnyczuk, Gerrit Lansing, Patrick Pritchett, Amanda & James Cook, David Rich (all up in Gloucester & still working in the glow of all that was Gerrit Lansing and so Charles Olson and Vincent Ferrini); Edward Barrett, Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno & Patricia Pruitt; Ros Zimmermann, Chloe Garcia Roberts ...Peter Gizzi, Martha McCollough, Elliot Cardinaux out in the hinterlands ...just to name but a few of the folks at work in the Field....... This, as I keep quoting Stein saying, is The Composition in Which We Live.....ever forming and dissolving with flashes of infamy or brilliant inspiration shimmering across it like a grand squall... But this Composition must be composed and that is what I am striving for and trying to encourage in others.

You were involved with the Somerville based Lift Magazine—founded by Joe Torra. Can you tell us about the germ of the idea that started this? What was unique about this publication?

The “germ” I missed! It occurred at an after-reading dinner that I was cooking: I left the room to attend to the food and when I came in to serve it a romance was starting at one end of the table and Torra had proposed a magazine to be called “Entropy” (a name I talked him out of) at the other end. The marvelous writer TJ Anderson and I were asked to be contributing editors.

As to what was “unique”: Nothing! It was a magazine without funding or any institutional authorizations made at a dining room table (the early covers were printed on my big hand press by myself with the artists present & instructing me) & the Xeroxed pages were hand sewn by the editors, (this before it was taken glossy) And I think that was its most important mark: Anyone with the time & energy can do this. You don’t need a university or a patron or any other authorization: you need people to gather together and Make it. And the energy from this Act will in turn start a circulation. The good or bad or “importance” or “uniqueness” of it have little to do with the Act of making it, which is the genuine gesture.

You have commissioned local poets' plays. Which play stands out in your mind? Do you think poets are natural playwrights?

That was back in the second or third season of the Word of Mouth series... I was writing short verse plays and the other poet was Barbra Blatner, who was and is an honest playwright & is still quite active in New York. But the plays were not “commissioned” it was just what we were working on at the time.

I don’t know from “natural”. What happens is that I start to Hear a form that seems to be moving as dialogue and some sense of an arrival at meaning.... and I follow it as far as possible in what ever form. Actually all of my work since 1991 under the title A Book of Measure [there are now 2 completed volumes [Vol. One The Journals of the Man who Keeps Bees came out from Talisman House in 2017, Volume 2 The Book of The Night Sky, is largely unpublished and a third volume, The Book of the Far Shore, which I am working on currently]... but all of my work has been a conscious mixing and blending of all the forms available to us....without boundaries. Volume II has an entire 5 act verse play which I am perpetually reworking, about John Dee imbedded within it and an appendix of short stories The Marvels of David Leering (which is a book being read by the Narrator of A Book of Measure & which in turn contains translated poems by Jalal al-Din Jalabiense that Leering is reading: so books and authors inside of books and authors), which were published in a beautiful edition by Corbett’s wonderful Pressed Wafer.

In attempting some type of an introduction to A Book of Measure I landed on this:

A BRIEF NOTE ON THE TEXT OF A BOOK OF MEASURE:

“I hope this collection will contribute to a literary tradition that resists distinctions between poetry and fiction as one way to save history from the doom of duality.” Fanny Howe /Radical Love [2006]

I think of A Book of Measure as a Composed Through Text, by which I mean that in working within its emerging Field I have attempted to employ All of the Compositional Elements available to me via an equalizing of Sound, Image, image and sound clusters, typeface, word line and paragraph spacing, caesura and text block, to name a few; with which to fully articulate the text.

In this, A Book of Measure follows a line that traces back to the typographical indications, so keenly ripe, within the fascicles of Emily Dickinson, extending into our own time, running through the work of Gertrude Stein, the technical proposals contained in Olson’s Projective Verse and into the Practice of a Whole Art, articulated in Robert Duncan’s Ideas of the Meaning of Form and the breakthrough in the textual layering of his HD Book.

From Dickinson’s Field of the page to Duncan’s explorations on a Selectric Typewriter.... we find ourselves now, in composing with word processing and Google awaiting, within the full deployment of the imagination, with new possibilities and indeed new responsibilities, opening to the author– who needs but employ them.

Which is then to say we are, with the advent of the computer, as far from the author submitting a hand written manuscript to the Publisher’s graphic interpretations, as the first scribes attempting to stabilize the old stories into manuscript or movable type were from the Tales of the Campfire.

It is my hope then that this is a Different book; An ark of Forms- A book of Measure.

So then to go back to your question: All of this, the readings series, the readings of other texts in the Series the pairing of seemingly disparate poets (my forever favorite was putting up Frank Bidart (yet another “Boston” treasure), with the poet& publisher/artist Tom Rayworth...... or pairing MIT professor/film maker and writer & dear friend Thomas Levenson with the painter/ fiction writer, Thorpe Feidt [whose amazing The Leibniz Papers has Leibniz and Newton reincarnated in Ipswich and married to each other...] & again, both of them part of our Local scene) bringing in plays or writing them (one of those early verse play is in my first full length book How to Live [Zoland, Cambridge Ma 1998] as an integral portion of the textual flow no different from a recognizable “poem” and it in turn was derived from Yeats). All of this is the Field that I see and work within. Everything every avenue / a figure in the landscape a bios at work around me and with me at work within it.

You, like the poet Joe Torra started out as waiters. Now, both of you 'serve' poetry. Can you think of any similarities between poet and waiter. What did you glean for your own writing from this job?

I gleaned a life that gave me time to write. I got lucky and worked for 2 people who actually respected what I was up to [Mary Catherine Deibel and Deborah Hughes at Upstairs at the Pudding or On the Square]: It was restaurant work with all its craziness and stupidity but joy as well and they let me work 2 or 3 days a week and understood that I had another job (2 after I had a kid!)... I was there just shy of 30 years .....and it also coalesced the sense that I have, first generated at my parents dinner table of the essential connection to an actual Life of food and stories. A Book of Measure has no “waiting” stories which are kind of a snooze to me. But it is full of food and dinners and people sharing both.

In an article I read—your community involvement was fostered by the Grateful Dead. Please explain.

That was not so much the Dead as it was Bill Graham who ran the Fillmore West Ballroom in San Francisco in the 60’s and who I clearly saw even at 17 as creating the sense of Place I was talking about earlier & which brings us back to Composing the life in which we are living.

What I learned from the energy centers of Bill Graham or The Grateful Dead was to respect those other energy Centers at work around us. Out of going to Dead shows in the period I was exposed to Bach, Jazz, Blue Grass, Blues, New Orleans jams Bakersfield Country, experimental music and so on & wonderfully on. All on the basis that it was a sincere Music. Graham did the same thing (Miles Davis whom I had barely heard of billed with the Dead for example): All of this was the Community at work around us. All of this equalized the Form(s) being pursued and actively so by people slightly older than I was. One had the sense that you should “Know” (which so deeply instilled in me Wanting to Know), while being repeatedly schooled that there was so much grand creating going on around us that we had no notion about. Doc & Marl Watson walking out at the Fillmore one night.....& I had had never heard of them.... Buddy Rich & his big band or Woody Herman .....Rolland Kirk, Virgil Fox doing a night of Bach & so on & on. It was a magnificent gesture of Inclusion and that inclusion started a Circulation of creative intents and Joy which I am still chasing.

So when you get to me trying to make up a series it was standing on those shoulders. I started introducing complete texts scored for several readers to bring those works into the sense of the Community that I felt forming around the Word of Mouth Series...... Spicer was an early break through with a reading of After Lorca [in the first Season: October of 87] & I know that those readings sent a few people running toward Spicer’s Work, and the reading was generated simply because I had at last found Spicer myself... I did a complete reading (over the objection of the participants who begged for cuts at every rehearsal!) of Stein’s Tender Buttons which at least for myself repositioned the importance of that text; but it was also a pleasurable experience for all of us to “hear” those texts as a community. And this in turn shows up in my work on A Book of Measure with the different forms ...lyric bridges running to the seemingly abstract, narrations, plays, entire books being “read” by the Narrator, the pirated Journals of the 18th C, portuguese writer Maria Torres & her poems, Fairy Tales, historical articles & folk tales; the goal being to not exclude anything that was trying to come into the work at work.

It was to my sense an Enactment of Field.... the idea coming from Charles Olson & Projective Verse of course but enlarged in a generous way ...a more inclusive way by Robert Duncan. Duncan in a lecture for Tom Gunn’s classes which I snuck into at UC Berkeley, saying that once he understood Olson’s proposition of Open Verse he noted that if it were really going to be an Open Form “didn’t it have to include the Closed?” The penetration of that idea into my 20 something mind can not be adequately measured: But like a great Fullerian trim tab it quietly began to change the direction of everything. I should add that all of this was pouring into my imagination as I was discovering Stein and going to the Fillmore in my last years of High School and first college years, where I added classical music (notably Gustav Mahler & Virgil Thompson..... each of whom extended this idea of an inclusive Form) and painting as well.

Which then brings us full circle to Bill Corbett, Fanny Howe, Gerrit Lansing, the reading series and my own work. Inclusion is the Measure & The Placement of Self into the ongoing Field is the goal. Obedience or a School of Something....not so much.

But I am Measuring... constantly ....

& still attempting to place myself where all of this can sweep across & into me.

The Boston Globe: The New England Poetry Club’s new summer series is reframing Americana

 The New England Poetry Club’s new summer series is reframing Americana

Presidential inaugural poet Richard Blanco joins We (too) The People, Longfellow House’s series where music and poetry reclaim the Constitution’s collective ‘We’ this Sunday

By Jeffrey KellyUpdated August 2, 2025, 12:00 a.m.

The New England Poetry Club’s summer poetry series reexamines the phrase "We the people" with guest readings and performances. Pictured: Mass. native Diannely

Antigua, who is the 13th poet laureate of Portsmouth, N.H., and was featured during the July 20, 2025 reading.PROVIDED

Despite July’s persistent heat and humidity, poetry enthusiasts gathered under the shade of a few linden trees on the Longfellow House’s lawn in Cambridge twice. The two well-attended meetups were the first of the New England Poetry Club’s We (too) The People, a summer series in collaboration with nonprofit Friends of Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters and the historic site it supports.

Consisting of eight bi-monthly Sunday readings — four this summer and four next summer — We (too) The People celebrates the diversity of contemporary poets’ voices and visions, leading up to the United States’ Semiquincentennial in July 2026. Each reading opens with a 30-minute musical performance followed by a 30-minute reading of verse from a contemporary poet. In addition to their own work, each musical guest performs a piece by another artist; a selection they believe reinterprets Americana. Steven Ratiner, the president of the New England Poetry Club, selects each program’s special guests.

This Sunday, Aug. 3, lovers of verse will return to Longfellow House for the third installment of the series with a reading from Richard Blanco, the fifth inaugural poet, who was selected by President Obama in 2013, and a performance by Venezuelan trombonist Angel Subero.

Ratiner said he had the idea for the series six months ago; it was a response to being “worried about the health and vitality of our democracy.”

“I wanted a program that would reaffirm the range of voices, backgrounds, histories that come into play in American society and American culture,” Ratiner said.

The series began July 6 with Robert Pinsky, a three-time poet laureate and Boston University professor emeritus, accompanied by Berklee associate professor and multi-instrumentalist Stan Strickland. It was followed by July 20 readings by poets Stephanie Burt and Diannely Antigua. Burt is a Harvard professor and Antigua is the 13th poet laureate of Portsmouth, N.H., and the University of New Hampshire’s inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence. The musical guest was Todd Brunel, a critically acclaimed clarinetist and saxophone player.

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Before Pinsky took the stage, Ratiner introduced the event as a “celebration of the big encompassing ‘We.’” He noted that the Constitution preamble’s use of “We” did not necessarily consider diverse voices. Still, he believed there was an aspiration from the Founding Fathers for a more inclusive “We” that has slowly developed in America.

“I believe that ‘we’ has to be the guiding spirit in this country, if we are to continue prospering,” Ratiner said in an interview with the Globe. “‘We’ makes a place for everyone, all our backgrounds, all our histories, and I believe poetry is very often the spearhead to doing that.”

Ratiner said each featured poet had agreed with this sentiment, which showcased to him “the same sort of urgency to affirm what is really important in American culture.”

Blanco said the series’ name struck him because it underscores that “we” means everybody, a through line also seen in his work as a poet. Through Blanco’s poetry, he states claim on his “Americanness as a gay Latino immigrant not only personally but for anyone who has felt marginalized and not fully included in the narrative of this country.”

In each reading, the poets relay what “We” means to them. Pinsky read his work as well as poetry by Allen Ginsberg before inviting Strickland up for an impromptu collaborative freestyle. Several dozen people sat in black folding chairs or on the grass while a second crowd watched the reading’s livestream. Each reading will be available for streaming and playback via the Somerville Media Center’s YouTube channel.

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During the second event, Burt discussed Walter Mondale, Vermont, and Cambridge while reading from her 2022 collection, “We Are Mermaids,” and forthcoming collection “Read the Room” — while Antigua explored topics such as mental health and the American dream in her books “Ugly Music” and “Good Monster.” Antigua then invited Somerville’s poet laureate Lloyd Schwartz to read a poem named “The Gardner’s Song.”

This summer’s final event will feature award-winning poet and founder of UMass Boston’s creative writing MFA program Martha Collins on Aug. 10. The 2026 readers and performers will be announced at a later date.

For Blanco’s Sunday reading, he said he hopes listeners leave with a sense of faith and cautious optimism for the future.

Blanco said he thinks poetry helps us better understand issues that are “abstracted and distorted by news channels and social media.”

“Poetry gives these issues real stories — real faces, real names. In doing so, poetry grounds those issues in a way that helps us better understand them and deal with them,” Blanco said in an email statement. “But, besides that, in times like these, it’s even more important to gather in community so that we don’t feel as alone, frustrated, fearful, but rather more empowered, uplifted, rejuvenated.”

WE (TOO) THE PEOPLE

Sunday, Aug. 3, 3-4 p.m. Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters, 105 Brattle St., Cambridge. Free. nepoetryclub.org/we-too-the-people

Red Letter Poem #264

 The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #264

 

 

 

 

Chorale: In April



1



Because pain is colloquial

as every true poem



because I can neither look nor entirely look

away



from myself



2



Two Lebanese boys on a stretcher—

fish in a net show more surprise.





3



I listen

for words rushing

from trees

through the April

staccato of rain:



a finite network of roots

wires the earth

and every caress

carries for thousands of miles.



4



Bewildering,

the mouths of the dead, methodically

stifling their hunger with flowers.



5



Soon these green fists

will open and the veins

of the leaves, hammered daily





by light, will swell until

the leaves themselves begin

to darken, shrivel, fall.



The living brother

must speak for himself.

The rain says nothing at all.

––Askold Melnyczuk

 

 

 

“What else is a poet to do?”

I began Red Letter #263 with that very same question as I considered one writer’s response after receiving a devastating diagnosis. In the end, I made the case that when a clear-eyed poet like Susan Roney-O’Brien invests herself in such a potent suite of revelatory poems, the individual experience cannot help but become universal. But what about the opposite situation? How is a writer to honestly respond when a global crisis, plunging millions into dire circumstances, torments one individual’s conscience? Here, the universal becomes intensely personal, like bright sun focused through a magnifying glass. In Askold Melnyczuk’s just-released collection, The Venus of Odesa (MadHat Press), he explores the suffering of a world where money, power, and politics always seem to trump justice, conscience, and the communal will. How is any one attentive mind, one vulnerable heart, to survive? Of course, the more well-informed we strive to be, the more acutely we feel what’s at stake, and how the powers that be fail to respond to our sincere pleas. So then what’s to be done? Continue marching, making charitable donations aimed at the latest calamity, penning angry letters which our Congressmen and -women will likely never see? Or do we simply surrender and go about one’s personal business, where our actions often have a demonstrable effect, and small pleasures are plentiful? If Askold––who, to my mind, embodies the humanist impulse, the littéraire engagé ––finds himself falling into despair over the unmitigated (and unnecessary) suffering in places like Ukraine and Gaza, things are even worse than imagined.



And forgive me, but here’s a fact that will only amplify a sense of hopelessness: the photograph that prompted this poem was not from a recent front page story but the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the nineteen-eighties! One is tempted to say that history is not repeating its cycles but madly perseverating. Still, what does Askold offer us in response? It’s a little chorale of voices, a give-and-take of speaking minds––and, from the opening line (“Because pain is colloquial”) we realize he’s writing about the inner dialectic voiced by our careworn selves. But the emotional pendulum swings with its own momentum. The speaker in section 1 turns pain into self-reflection; “because I can neither look nor entirely look/ away//from myself,” we grasp how much his heart identifies with these poor war-ravaged siblings. Almost off-handedly, the poet breaks our hearts with his phrase “fish in a net show more surprise”­­––but, as quickly, he comforts us with that “staccato rain” and the interconnectedness of the natural world where, within a root system, “every caress/ carries for thousands of miles.” Back and forth, that oscillating heart: “Bewildering,/ the mouths of the dead, methodically/ stifling their hunger with flowers,” followed quickly with “The living brother/ must speak for himself./ The rain says nothing at all.“



Askold has an eye for the telling detail. There is a good chance that if you know his writing, it’s as an acclaimed author of fiction, essay, and memoir. He was also the founding publisher of the literary mainstay Agni Review and, more recently, created Arrowsmith Press to publish books by writers he deems utterly essential, especially in these desperate times. But poetry was his first impulse and, I was delighted to discover, was never drowned out by fiction’s louder applause. And though, in this poem, you can easily replace the nationality of the little brothers with a dozen more from recent conflicts, one crucial fact must be considered as we come to terms with today’s circumstance: a writer like Askold–-like dozens more I can name––have not ceased caring, not turned away from the pain or retreated into silence. So, yes: we march, donate, assail our elected officials, vote for better ones––and yes, we savor the daily pleasures, knowing full well how many are denied them. Kenneth Patchen, in one of his poem-paintings, wrote simply: “The One/ who comes to question himself/ has cared for mankind.” Perhaps that is our number one job as poets, artists. And if we do this publicly, determinedly––in print, paint, marble, sound, and mesmerizing dance––we make it just a little easier for someone coming after us to consider the options and do the same. True, “The rain says nothing at all”––but we do, as loud as possible, for all those poor faces condemned to silence.

 

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner