Red Letter Poem #171

 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 #171

 

 

 

 

 

“Horses carry me as far as my longing can reach,

Transport me to the many-voiced road of the Goddess

That carries the one who listens through vast silence. . .”

 

                                                 ––Parmenides

 

 

Horses, yes.  And words.  For Gary Whited, language proved capable of carrying him across tremendous distances: from his childhood on the prairies of Montana; off to Penn State University for the study of philosophy and a life of the mind; eventually into the composition of his own poetry which somehow seems to have a foot in the ancient world as well as one in the modern.  Broadly speaking, his work is an investigation of that deep sense of connectedness he remembers first experiencing in his boyhood explorations of the natural world.  In school, he focused on the works of the pre-Socratic philosophers, especially Parmenides whose writing became something of his first muse.  And just last year, they were the fuel that brought him to the west coast of Italy and the ruins of Eléa – the very place where this philosopher lived in the 5^th century BCE; he was literally following in the footsteps of his ancient mentor.  Gary first began translating Parmenides back in graduate school, and that work became part of his dissertation.  Those translations, newly revised, will comprise a section in his forthcoming poetry collection Being,There to be published this fall by Wayfarer Books.  Led by the forcefulness of these unbridled ideas, Gary ended up teaching philosophy in places like the University of Montana, University of Texas and, here in Boston, at Emerson College.  His first volume of poetry, Having Listened (from Homebound Publications) was honored with the Benjamin Franklin Silver Book Award, and his work has appeared in an array of literary journals. 

 

It came as no surprise to me to learn that Gary has also practiced as a psychotherapist for the last four decades, because deep listening is essential to all three disciplines: healing, teaching, the making of poems.  In today’s selection, it feels as if our focused attention is capable of animating even the sun-chiseled stones – as if we might take our bearings in time’s vast expanse by what’s been recorded in their silent vigil.  And, in the course of the poem’s unfolding, we can feel the poet excavating the very origins of language, the ways it connects us to the surrounding world and to the archeology of human thought.  What philosophical (or poetic) truth can be more important than the boundless desire to know – the desire enlivening all we do, even if the knowing too often remains beyond our grasp.  “O youth, linked with immortal charioteers/ And with horses carrying you to our home,/” – so wrote Parmenides in his incantatory poem – “Welcome!”  I find Gary’s work to be constructed around such a welcome.  In this inky temple, we can practice listening to our own longing, trusting that the horses will find their own way home.

 

 

 

Touched by Stones

 

 

I walk where Parmenides walked,

Among the ruins of walls fallen

Since his time, stones that remain

Because they can, because they are

Stones, and in their way speak something

We cannot know, but be touched by

If we listen in stone.

 

Better maybe to say they stone,

Give them the power and standing

Of a verb, one among the many

Chiseled down to a noun, spoken

Over and over, that way we turn

Verbs nouns repeating them until

They fall down, as those walls have fallen,

And now we mostly only remember,

The way a noun might remember

The verb it was when first spoken,

Spoken into being.

 

I feel the stones awaken,

Begin, how odd, to listen,

Or I imagine it so.  Could it

Be they recall through my seeing,

My listening and my imagining

How it was they came to be the walls

That once stood here upright and sturdy,

Each one lifted by gifted hands,

Placed on top of the stone beneath,

Becoming a house, a bath, a temple,

These walls?

 

I see him clear as day, Parmenides

Walking among the tilted stones,

Offering his right hand in welcome,

And I don’t quite know if I imagine it,

Remember it, or if he walks here too

Right now beside this water that flows,

Flows from the spring above that gave

This place its name, Hyéle.

 

 

                       ––Gary Whited

 

 

 

The 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 Twitter          

@StevenRatiner