Wednesday, December 04, 2024

Red Letter Poem #233

  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.

 

––SteveRatiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #233

 

 

 

 

Geese

 

                “Sometimes a long-dead friend stops by for a while.”

       –Wislawa Szymborska

 

 

I climb the branches

& disappear into white pear blossoms

                                          for a while.

 

I listen to the low honking of geese

flying through opaque clouds

                                          for a while.

 

I pretend your hand turning the doorknob

as you come to see me will last

                                          for a while.

 

 

                                     ––Lee Varon

 

 

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over. . .

 


This is, of course, from Robert Frost’s “Birches.”  Overwhelmed by the world’s unrelenting claim upon him, the poet entertained the desire to simply flee, to create a momentary mindscape he could occupy in order to gain perspective, soothe the heart, breathe slow.  Perhaps you’re feeling something similar these days––shaken by extraordinary circumstances that seem to, from time to time, define our personal and family lives.  Or, if you’re enjoying one of those marvelous periods where the path ahead is broad and sunlit, and simple delights abound, all it might take is a glance at the morning headlines to send you toppling, fearful for what’s happening to our country as a whole, let alone the beleaguered planet.  And so Lee Varon’s diminutive tercets might be just the thing to calm your throbbing head and palpitating heart.  Having read this (seemingly) simply poem a dozen times, I find I am hesitant to say too much about it, for fear of chasing the magic away.  But perhaps, if I confide to you just a few of my responses, I‘ll gain a bit more clarity as to why this poem has touched me as it has––and you’ll let me know if you too fell under its spell.

 

Right from the title, the scene is being set.  The sound of the geese leaving: here in New England, that hollow-sounding haronk signals the inescapable approach of winter.  We’ll often stop what we’re doing and look up––and, watching that wavering V arrowing across the gray skies, it always seems to me like a signature, an official seal on a document the body’s already been studying for weeks. Then there’s the Szymborska epigraph, a poet who always makes dazzling leaps of the imagination seem matter-of-fact.  And right from there, I knew which imagined faces I might be seeing on my front step, expecting entrance.  I was so glad that Lee never specified who it was she envisioned in her doorway, making that shadowy visit––she leaves that detail and others for the reader to supply.  Then I picture myself climbing into the blossoming pear, and the surrounding cloud of white petals brings to mind both beauty and oblivion.  I find myself entering the what-if of the verses––branches, geese, and then that hand on the doorknob––and there are so many possibilities for healing, hope. . .but each of the stanzas concludes with that simple refrain, “for a while.”   What we desire is held in abeyance, set to the side, yielding reluctantly to reality.  A dream, a memory, a poem can restore that irretrievable loss––but only for the briefest of moments.  Then the geese vanish, the clouds cover over, and we return to the work at hand.

 

Frost spoke of the desire to make one’s vocation and avocation a single enterprise; most of us strive for this with varying degrees of success.  I think Lee’s occupation as a social worker and her work as a poet and prose writer have allowed her to practice a similar sort of attention to the world, its suffering and tentative joys; and it underscores the need for compassion throughout.  Lee was the winner of the 19th Annual Briar Cliff Review Fiction contest, and her poetry and short stories have appeared in a host of literary venues.  Her collection Shot in the Head was awarded the Sunshot Poetry Prize.  Finishing Line Press, who published her very first chapbook, has just brought out The Last Bed, a volume of poetry that deals with “the roller coaster ride” that is living with a family member suffering from what’s now termed ‘substance use disorder.’  Perhaps the entirety of this new collection serves as a sanctuary from some of the pain and losses she’s experienced––but I am pleased that, in the end, Lee arrived where Frost did: at reengagement and renewed love.  “May no fate willfully misunderstand me/ And half grant what I wish and snatch me away/ Not to return.  Earth’s the right place for love:/ I don’t know where it's likely to go better.”  And neither do I.

 

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* 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

Saturday, November 30, 2024

Red Letter Poem #232

 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.

 

––SteveRatiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #232

 

 

           

 

La Liseuse

 

       —Paris, 1878

 

 

This is the year the Eurydice sinks

      and the SS Byzantin. Here,

the World’s Fair has opened,

while back home the Senate debates

 

women’s suffrage as the First Lady

smiles and rolls pink and yellow-

striped Easter eggs across the lush

White House lawns. Cassatt

 

does not show us the headlines,

      and we cannot tell from Lydia’s

soft profile which stories she reads

      or what she thinks of them,

 

or that at forty-one she’s just four years

      from her death, Bright’s disease

already ravaging her kidneys,

though neither she nor her not-yet

 

famous sister knows this. They believe

whatever ails her—the doctors

disagree—is in remission now,

and so together with Mary she tours

 

the boulevards and galleries,

attends the right plays and salons—

though she knows Mary brings her

mostly as chaperone, to quiet

 

the gossips, and that she uses her,

as a free model and housekeeper. It’s Lydy

who shops and sews, keeps the accounts,

stays the loneliness her sister

 

battles. Did she long for a husband

and children? A lover? An art of her

own? Nothing survives of her letters,

and little is said of her in Mary’s,

 

except reports of her devotion

and the family’s praise. Angel

in the house, she’s forever silent, her sister’s

Reader, her Woman, Crocheting.

 

 

                                 ––Susan Aizenberg

 

 

The painter Mary Cassatt was a bundle of contradictions: the first great American Impressionist, she spent the majority of her creative life as an expatriate in France; famous for her realistic depictions of motherhood and domesticity, in her own life she eschewed both in order to pursue her artistic career.  And, as a fierce advocate for suffrage and women's rights, it seems Mary (as poet Susan Aizenberg depicts in today’s bittersweet poem) may have allowed another woman’s needs to go unfulfilled, simply in service of her own (a failing often attributed to men.)  Susan centers our attention on Lydia Cassatt, Mary’s elder sister, who accompanied her to Europe as companion, housekeeper, unpaid model, deflector of gossip.  And though we are familiar with her appearance from a number of well-known canvases, far less is known of the woman––especially her inner life and aspirations.  It seems she was content to spend her days in service of the creative genius she saw in her sister––an avocation often called ‘kinship work’ by anthropologists––or, in a phrase featured in a famous poem of the day, "the angel in the house."  In today’s perspective, it likely seems an act that is both selfless and self-negating.

 

In any skillfully-executed composition, no daub of color, no background detail is presented unless it serves the overall aim of the canvas.  The same is true for a fine poem, and Susan begins hers with two little details intended (one might guess) simply to help indicate the 19th century time frame.  “This is the year the Eurydice sinks/ and the SS Byzantin.”  Of course, the roster of shipwrecks in 1878 is extensive; so Susan’s choices hint at a range of cultural markers: the mythological Eurydice, forced into the Underworld to become Hades’ bride; and the fall of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, and with it the intricate and arcane styles that were its hallmark.  In contrast, the Impressionists would attempt to make viewers experience the simple beauty of everyday life and the extraordinary marvel of that is our perception of light.  In a series of paintings, we eavesdrop on Lydia’s immersion in activities as varied as concert-going, crocheting, or (as in “La Liseuse,”) the petit solitude involved in reading the morning newspaper.  Of course, all of these underscore their primary purpose: to sit patiently as her younger sibling worked at the easel.  Lydia left behind no letters or diary entries which might help us understand her feelings––so it takes a poet’s imagination to consider whether this was rewarding or frustrating or something beyond simple comprehension.

 

Susan, Professor Emerita of Creative Writing and English at Creighton University, is the author of three poetry collections––the first of which, Muse, was awarded Virginia Commonwealth University’s Larry Levis Prize, and the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry.  She’s the co-editor (with Erin Belieu) of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (Columbia University Press.)  Today’s poem is taken from her recently-published A Walk with Frank O’Hara and Other Poems (University of New Mexico Press.)  I am always intrigued by the varied subject matter, tonal shifts, and surprising emotional navigation captured in her work.  If both heart and mind remain alert (her poems seem to be telling us,) perhaps we can avoid the pitfalls of the habitual.  Susan’s portrait here––not of the ‘famous sister,’ but the largely-unheralded companion––allows us to experience her mortal jeopardy as akin to our own.  Lydia Cassatt is not unique in the sacrifices love demands of family members.  By the close of this poem, I found myself both angry at a world that forces such choices on individuals, especially women––but also frustrated with Lydia herself for not demanding more of life before illness would cut hers short.  And yet I also marveled at the generosity of spirit required to make such a ‘gift’ to someone so dear.  I don’t know if that quality comes naturally to me––yet it’s one I experienced in two of my sisters, and to which I quietly aspire.  So I’m thankful to recognize that Lydia’s simple pleasures, perhaps, provided more contentment than I often recognize.  It seems I may be carrying my own tangle of contradictions as well.

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* 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          

@StevenRatine