Red Letter Poem #190

 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 #190

 

 

 

 

 

The Lock

 

 

When we met, I cared for no one.  Just myself.

Still I wanted to impress you with my mouth––

 

“Such a mouth on her,” my mother groaned

to neighbors.  I practiced lip trills a long time

 

before I let you hear.  My candles burned

down to essential scents, fire and wax.

 

You smelled like balsam, like the forest.

I was a city girl until I tangled with you, sure

 

the way a child is sure, no one knows me.

I felt the tumblers twist, a combination

 

that opened me to kissing my mother’s

wrinkled hand, and then you.  Everything.

 

 

                         ––Joyce Peseroff

 

 

I spent over four decades of my life teaching poetry: to elementary, secondary, college and graduate students, as well as adults and senior citizens.  I always felt rejuvenated by the tremendous upsurge of creative energy present in those workshops, but this was especially true when working with very young students.  Having endured what––let’s be honest––can often feel like the tyranny of English grammar, they intuited in my approach that poetry was about liberation: at last, they thought, all the chains could be smashed, all the rules broken.  Certainly, it's thrilling to surrender to the siren song of imaginative language; but then my message would grow more subtle: the rules can indeed be bent or broken if (and that if loomed large) it was in service of a higher purpose, the inner requirements of the emerging poem.  Simply abandoning, willy-nilly, the rules of the road that syntax provides will usually result in head-on collisions and sheer unintelligibility.  You I and talking each other to might never without them communicate (if you catch my meaning––and you may very well not.)  Reading and writing poems can definitely affirm the idea that everything is, indeed, possible when pursuing your creative vision.  But most important: to experience that sense of utter necessity, an impulse that drives both the poem and the emerging poet. 

 

Joyce Peseroff’s new piece is rife with that spirit of rebelliousness––linguistically and emotionally.  She twists syntax, fragments sentences, and reassembles lines in ways that might make her English teacher scowl.  And the narrative thread of the piece is so ambiguous, we can’t help but insert our own stories into the gaps––which, I’m guessing, is at the heart of the poet’s intention.  We begin in media res with a teenage protagonist (at least that’s how I’m envisioning her) and another mysterious presence (the bond of “we” already formed.)  What passion has so enthralled the speaker, it‘s spurred a jailbreak from her own solitude?  “Still I wanted to impress you with my mouth” she says––and if you’re not writing your own fevered scenarios when you read that line (ranging from the intellectually precocious to the downright risqué), then you’ve likely suppressed all memory of adolescence.  But then the poem jukes right: “"Such a mouth on her,” my mother groaned/ to neighbors”––and I’m laughing and wincing at the same time.  “I was a city girl until I tangled with you,” (tangled?!  and now we’re squirming a little in our seats.)  “Sure”, she goes on––and what a marvelous enjambment, surety leading to the ultimate insecurity––“sure/ the way a child is sure, no one knows me.”  Right then, I am remembering my first serious girlfriend and how consequential such a connection can be, even if the world terms it ‘puppy love.’  The poem’s final and encompassing “everything” presents a panoply of possibilities.  It represents our first giant step toward true personhood––moving away from the bond of parental love, as the heart begins staking its own claim on existence.

 

Readers may remember Joyce from three previous Red Letter appearances, but I’ll remind you that she is the author of six poetry collections––her most recent, Petition (Carnegie Mellon University Press) was named a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Book Awards.  As a poet, editor, and educator, she’s been a vital presence in the New England literary scene for decades.  This new piece brought to mind a chorus of other voices celebrating intellectual independence.  It was Robert Frost who famously commented that “writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net.”  I’ve heard teachers use this comment to disparage the ‘unregulated’ (implying ‘unskilled’) nature of the genre.  But without the crucial constraints of formal verse, the poet must rely on his/her own imagined architecture to make the poem cohere.  Said another prominent poetic contrarian: “To live outside the law you must be honest” (it sounds better in that Dylan drawl)––not free from all rules and standards but governed by ones of your own determination.  And as for Joyce, let me quickly agree: such a mouth on that girl!  You never know what will emerge, how it will nudge us off-balance, or pick the lock on an unsuspecting heart.

 

 

 

 

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