Red Letter Poem #261

 The Red Letters

 

 

I

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 #261



The Two Liberations of Crispus Attucks





First from his master who had

This to say about



The Mulatto Fellow, about 27

Years of Age, named Crispas.



How his hair was short and curl’d

His knees nearer together



Than common, and his bear-skin

Coat light-colored. That his



Britches were made of new

Buckskin, his yard stockings



Blue, his woolen shirt checked.

What he did not see



Is what he did Not See.

The empty space of Crispus.



How like smoke, like nothing,

Like dust he disappeared.



So to write him in—to restore

The It of him, the ad and mug-



Shot payed-for and run. October

2, 1750, Boston Gazette:



Whoever shall take up said

Run-away, and convey him



To his abovesaid Master, shall

Have Ten Pounds, old Tenor



Reward, and all necessary charges

Paid. And all masters of Vessels



And others, are hereby

Cautioned against concealing



Or carrying off said Servant

On Penalty of the Law.



For the weight of him,

For the worth of him,



Who stands presently

Martyr and master



Of his wounded and full

Self, first among men



Before enslavement,

Among them the actual



Unconceptually detained.

Crispus taking the first



Bullet like a 21st century

Black man, like a Black



Man in a car to convey

Him up the freeway.



The way to free.

The way from tyranny.





––Danielle Legros Georges








"What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" That was the title of a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Douglass was, of course, the American abolitionist, social reformer, compelling orator, writer, and statesman nonpareil––an acclaimed figure at a time when the vast majority of his fellow black men and women living in these United States would have been considered the equivalent of a horse or carriage: property. If you think about how outraged many in Donald Trump’s America would be by the tone (let alone content) of this address, imagine how utterly revolutionary this would have seemed, eleven years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. Invited to deliver this Independence Day speech, organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass began to respond to his own query this way: “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy––a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”



It is always a challenge for any chronicler to make use of centuries-old documentation in such a way as to preserve its historical potency without leaving contemporary readers too much in the dark. Most poets shy away from attempting this. But Danielle Legros Georges did this often, and with unusual efficacy and grace––especially in Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England––the small chapbook from Staircase Books published posthumously this year. That word, posthumously, hits especially hard at those who associate the poet with her vibrant spirit, commitment to community, and seemingly bottomless reservoir of energy––even when (we would find out only belatedly) Danielle was suffering from a slow terminal illness. She was determined to live her life on her own terms and with her unique sense of imaginative imperative. In these final poems, she explores the history of enslaved people in the liberal enclaves of New England colonial states, making extensive use of newspaper accounts, slave papers, legal documents, and contemporaneous historical writing. The unusual spelling and syntax she borrows make us feel both distant from these sources and also strangely intrigued––as if we were eavesdropping on some alien world which, it turns out, was situated upon the very ground we presently inhabit. If your memory of high school history class is somewhat a blur, I’ll remind you who Crispus Attucks was: sailor and whaler from Framingham, MA; a man of African and Native American ancestry; and, like Douglass a century later, an escaped slave. He was also part of a rowdy protest in March of 1770 that resulted in British soldiers firing upon the crowd. Attucks was thought to have been the first to die––perhaps the earliest casualty of the approaching Revolutionary War. Contrast this pivotal role in history with how his former ‘owner’ saw him: a sketchy list of clothing items and physical traits. But then the poet illuminates the situation by saying: “What he did not see// Is what he did Not See./ The empty space of Crispus.”



Poets know how language conveys the overt meaning of the speaker while also betraying the covert intent. How easily the mind ricochets from “run” (as in a notice in a newspaper) to “runaway” (with visions of slave-catchers and manacles.) If the stance throughout much of the poem feels like that of the historian, nearing the conclusion the incendiary intent of the poet is revealed: “Crispus taking the first// Bullet like a 21st century/ Black man, like a Black// Man in a car to convey/ Him up the freeway.// The way to free./ The way from tyranny.” The contortions of language reveal just how hard the struggle has been to assess the distance between those antebellum slave days and our (supposedly) ‘post-racial’ 21st century America. Douglass’s rhetoric and the magnitude of its righteous indignation function like a sledgehammer. But Danielle’s language is more elliptical, subdued––right up until she places a needle into the center of the wound, shocking us with the reminder of how slowly the racial landscape has changed across the two-and-a-half century arc within this poem.



I will not spend my remaining sentences here detailing Danielle’s accomplishments (though I hope you’ll explore them further online.) I will only hint at the mark a poet can actually make upon this world, represented simply by some of what has been planned in her absence: France’s Ministry of Culture posthumously awarded Danielle a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; the newly redesigned Copley Square Park will feature her poem “How many kinds of love,” carved into the stone; a scholarship in her name is planned for students of Boston Public Schools; and the New England Poetry Club’s biannual fellowship for young writers of color will be titled in Danielle’s honor. These will now themselves become historical facts. And who, in the unscrolling years, will be moved by them and incorporate such reflective moments into poems?

 

 

 

 

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

Robert Pinsky/Stan Strickland, We, Too the People Reading--Longfellow House/ New England Poetry Club

                                                         (Click on below for video)

                                               https://www.youtube.com/live/oyjC3V2LVpo

Somerville Poet Molly O'Leary: A poet of Memories

Recently I caught up with Somerville Poet Molly O'Leary. She generously agreed to answer my questions.  From her website:

"Mollie O’Leary (b. 1995) is a poet from Massachusetts. She holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Kenyon College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Washington. Mollie’s chapbook The Forgetting Curve was published in 2023 through Poetry Online’s chapbook contest. Her work has appeared in McNeese Review, Chestnut Review, wildness and elsewhere. Mollie has participated in workshops through Tin House and Inprint; she has also attended artist residencies in Mexico, Italy, and Norway."

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


Somerville and the surrounding neighborhoods have a really vibrant arts and poetry scene. I’ve met a lot of people through poetry, including a local group of Boston poets called the Chickadee Collective. It’s been really inspiring and energizing to connect with people who share a love of language and want to talk about it!


You studied at Kenyon College with Somerville Poet Jennifer Clarvoe—how did this experience shape you as a writer?


Jennifer taught my Introduction to Poetry workshop when I was sophomore in college which was hugely influential since I was just starting out and finding my voice. I was also in her Prosody and Poetics class where I learned more about the musicality and rhythm of poetry. I remember we had to memorize and recite poems in her class, and that was such an interesting exercise in what lines, rhymes, or metaphors tend to stick with you and why that might be. It was a wonderful surprise to run into Jennifer at a coffee shop in Somerville almost 10 years since I took my first class with her!


Reading your poem " The Forgetting Curve," I am reminded of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" with its opening line " The art of losing is not hard to master." Was Bishop an influence for you?


Almost all of my mentors and various readers have drawn parallels between myself and Bishop—and I love that! Bishop has always been a big influence. I was actually introduced to her poem ‘Sestina’ in a class with Jennifer. Bishop’s understatement in that poem while also being so straightforward and honest with the reader struck me and has stayed with me ever since. Studying Bishop’s emotional restraint and her use of unadorned yet moving language has helped me write some of my more difficult poems like “Anti-Elegy.”


Why should we read your work?

My poetry is very interested in memory and how it shapes our understanding of ourselves and our connections with others, especially in the wake of traumatic or emotionally difficult events. If you have memories that you are both hesitant to remember yet afraid to forget, I think you’ll connect with my work.

RECURRENCE

Peering into the scoured bathtub, I spot
sour mildew budding. I wake to pink biofilm
on graying porcelain. Even slime mold has memory;
its amoeba body retrieves oat flakes. After I scythe
seven inches of hair, still I feel long strands running
down my spine. Ever since the flood, I try not to hold
onto much, exfoliate dead cells as if this excess
might weigh down a life raft. I slip pale sea glass
into my pocket only to part with it once I reach the car.
I used to capture wild hermit crabs, place them
in salted tap water, swooshing the tupperware
to mimic waves. I thought I could trick them
into being home. The hermit crabs lasted a day,
leaving behind their tiny calcified capsules, perfect
like piped frosting. The brain wants to be buoyant,
shedding ghosts to avoid overgrowth. We’re meant
to slough off the past, but I still don’t know
where to keep the shells the tide gives back.

*** From the Chestnut Review

Red Letter Poem #260

 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 #260

 

 

Metaphysics of the Seahorse

In a seagrass meadow, a male seahorse

gives birth, lunging like the yellow horse



on springs at the Vineyard’s penny arcade

my daughter loved, the barrel-bellied horse



grinning, Emma thought, as if it remembered

her each year. A camera films the seahorse



expelling hundreds of fry in a murky froth

from his brood pouch. Most seahorses



don’t survive—they’re weak swimmers—

but Poseidon’s chariot was pulled by seahorses.



Imagine the shock of Dr. Julius Caesar Aranzi

in 1587, cutting into a brain and finding seahorse-



shaped tissue in the temporal lobe, branding it

the hippocampus, sea monster horse,



not knowing it held the key to memory

and memory’s loss. The mindful seahorse



can look forward and back at the same time

while staying put. Me? I’m a crab, not a seahorse.


––Teresa Cader


Dizzying terminology. Metaphysics (so says my dictionary) “is the branch of philosophy that focuses on first principles, including ontology and cosmology, and is intimately connected with epistemology.” If ontology feels shrouded in the foggy recollection of your college philosophy class, a thumbnail might point to “the study of existence itself.” Cosmology and epistemology round out this heady quartet with an investigation of the physical universe, as well as the place of human knowledge within its grand design. A little overwhelming. . .and that’s just in the title of the poem! But then everything else that follows in Teresa Cader’s lovely meditation on our tenuous place within the natural world feels intimate and much more present. What a revelation, when I first learned about the seahorse, seadragon, and pipefish––members of the Syngnathidae family––whose males are impregnated by the females of their species, injecting their eggs into the partner’s ‘brood pouch.’ Then it’s the fathers who will fertilize, incubate, and give birth to some 2000 offspring when they come to term. But the poet quickly returns our attention to the human realm, writing: the seahorse “lunging like the yellow horse// on springs at the Vineyard’s penny arcade/ my daughter loved, the barrel-bellied horse// grinning, Emma thought, as if it remembered/ her each year.” The form of the poem––a contemporary ghazal–– acclimates us to the eddies and repetitions of our thought processes. And so, we slip easily from the nature documentary to the deep heart of the familial––and suddenly we have a good deal more skin in the game, so to speak.



But this deft poet is intent on drawing us into the whirlpool of comprehension by shifting back and forth between (what my mother termed) ‘textbook knowledge’ and the sort of wisdom (or astonishment) that is particular to the lived experience of our species. Mythology and history enter the mix (the names Poseidon and Julius Caesar can’t help but conjure schoolroom memories). And then, in 1587, when Dr. Aranzi performed his early investigations of the human body, we share his astonishment to discover that “seahorse-// shaped tissue in the temporal lobe, branding it/ the hippocampus, sea monster horse”––and we are quickly reminded that, while each day we navigate both the quotidian and the utterly mysterious, saddled to these fragile human bodies, we barely understand how any of this universe works. Human consciousness sometimes seems yet another far galaxy, and just as confounding. We can’t help imagining what depth of meaning resides in that seahorse-like brain structure. And how utterly at sea our lives would be if it were somehow damaged. As these couplets progressed, I felt myself releasing a heartfelt sigh: for the seahorse and its all-too-fragile young; for Teresa and Emma and the yellow rocking horse of youth; for all those scientists and poets who are so hungry to know, they will travel through emotional storms and over whatever rough seas necessary in order to reach that far shore.



I find the poetry Teresa produces to be a perfect combination of craft and invention; she is a student of history, but also an adventurous mind willing to startle us with improvisation. This is the third poem I’ve featured in the Letters from a manuscript that has finally achieved book publication. At Risk––awarded the 2023 Richard Snyder Memorial Award, and published by Ashland Poetry Press––explores, in a variety of dimensions, how our existence on this planet is buffeted by the storm tides of history, memory, grief––but spurred as well by the tailwinds of love and the full-sails of imagination. Teresa has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe; she also spent years working with young writers in programs at MIT, UMass-Boston, the Emerson College Graduate Writing Program and, for a decade, the low-residency MFA Program at Lesley University. And while this poet admires the seahorse’s ability to direct its attention both forward and back, I think Teresa’s crab-mind sideways crawl reminds us that, between where we hope to go and where we’ve been, lies the experience (and the deep rewards) of simply living on this planet.

 

 

 

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

Red Letter Poem #259

  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 #259

 

 

 

 

 

The Nature Of

 

 

 

Generosity        

                             

 

The day my last aunt, Lala, died

I visited, just by God’s chance.

She was sitting on the couch,

corpse-thin, smiling.

“Susie dear!” And, as they all did, always,

she reached her arms out to hold me.

 

 

 

Fear

 

 

Walking along the tar-stuck lane,

past a crowd of roses,

grandparents on the screened porch.

Nineteen years old.  Each rose

accusing: you don’t love him.

Dry-mouthed.  Alone.

                             

 

 

Heroism

 

 

My cousin Stephen held one sister up

from beneath the cracked ice,

as another clunked off on skates for help.

Held, held, so she could clutch at

and keep her life. Then he sank.

That apple of his father’s eye.

 

––Susan Donnelly


“So clearly will truths kindle light for truths”––this, from Lucretius, Roman poet and philosopher from the first century BCE, and author of De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), often considered the greatest masterpiece of Latin verse. Composed in six books, some 7400 dactylic hexameters, the didactic poet lays out the principles of Epicurean thought, the nature of the mind and soul, and the world of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. In today’s Red Letter, Susan Donnelly makes her return to these electronic pages with a much more succinct portrayal of our human landscape: a mere three 6-line verses, stitched together by the tremulous needle of a heart in motion. Unlike Lucretius, her poems do not entirely dismiss the hand of the divine––but they do present clear-eyed observation of lived experience, leaving us readers to elaborate on the philosophical implications. Her subtitles––‘Generosity,’ ‘Fear,’ ‘Heroism’––remind us that, for several thousand years, humankind has considered what takes place within the all-too-brief span of a lifetime, wondering whether meaning is inherent or imposed by the ones talking about it.



What I love about Susan’s poetry is the way she crafts completely naturalistic scenes, portrayed in simple colloquial voices; but beneath that ‘simple’ surface, tumultuous dramas and cerebral surprises abound. Our own imaginations quickly become willing collaborators in the unfolding mystery. “The day my last aunt, Lala, died” sets the stage with deliberate iambic pacing and that string of open vowel sounds. But it may take a second or third read to begin sensing the gravity of those seemingly off-hand details. “My last aunt” hints at the succession of griefs that life presents––something each new generation is compelled to recognize. But it’s the simple love which family often provides (there’s that deceptive term again) that is crucial here: “And, as they all did, always,/ she reached her arms out to hold me.” Always. How easily we trusted that idea in our youth, and how bedeviled by it as the years progress.



Of course, we aging children find ourselves more than a little benighted, rarely possessing much confidence about our place in the scheme of things. Are we worthy of that unconditional affection, or must it be somehow earned? And, as in the second poem, can we even trust the heart’s assessment of its own mercurial nature? The grandparents, behind the scrim of that screened porch, exist in a world very different from this heartsick nineteen-year-old’s (where even the roses are accusatory.) But that reaching out returns in the final poem with a gesture that seems unmistakably pure, yet nearly impossible to grasp. How deftly Susan sketches the deadly drama of thin ice on a New England pond. “Held, held, so she could clutch at/ and keep her life.” (If you heard a sonic allusion here to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”, you’re not alone.) Precious life will both triumph and succumb in a matter of fourteen words. Didn’t that matter-of fact drumbeat of three stressed syllables––“Then he sank.”–– make your own heart turn leaden? And the poet follows it with an unaffected folkism–– “That apple of his father’s eye.”––because that’s why cliché often exists: to say something when the unspeakable engulfs us, though we know words will fall short. Words do––but we do not. In the depths of the imagination, we place ourselves into this moment––as the girl clutching at her young life, and as the brother preparing to let go of his own––and wonder to what we would cling.




Susan is the author of four full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. Her first book, Eve Names the Animals was awarded the Morse Poetry Prize from Northeastern University Press; and the title sequence in The Maureen Papers and Other Poems (from Every Other Thursday Press) shared the New England Poetry Club’s Samuel Washington Allen Award. Recently, she published The Winners: Poems for Tim, a small collection written in the time leading up to her brother’s death and its aftermath, elegiac and deeply moving. “Life is one long struggle in the dark,” writes Lucretius, and I know Susan is honest enough to acknowledge the truth of the statement. Yet she seems more committed to the possibility that honest thought and the music of well-crafted language generate their own kind of light. I, for one, am grateful.

 

 

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