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 #194
At Mt. Auburn Cemetery
Walking among the graves for exercise
Where do you get your ideas how do I stop them
Looking for Mike Mazur’s marker I looked
Down at the grass and saw Stanislaw Baranczak
Our Solidarity poetry reading in Poznan
Years later in Newton Now he said I’m a U.S.
Liberal with a car like everybody else
When I held Bobo dying in my arms
His green eyes told me I am not done yet
Then he was gone when he was young he enjoyed
Leaping up onto the copy machine to press
A button and hear it hum to life and rustle
A blank page then another out onto its tray
Sometimes he batted the pages down to the floor
I used to call it his hobby here’s a marble
Wicker bassinet marking a baby’s grave
To sever the good fellowship of dust the vet’s
Needle first a sedative then death now Willie
Paces the house mowling his elegy for Bobo
They never meow to one another just to people
Or to their nursing mother when they’re small I
Marvel at this massive labeled American elm
Spreading above a cluster of newer names
Chang, Ohanessian, Kondakis joining Howells,
Emerson, Shaw and here’s a six-foot sphere
Of polished granite perfect and inscribed WALKER
Should I have let him die his own cat way
The cemetery official confided Bruce Lee
Spends less on a stone than Schwarzenegger what
Will mark the markers when like mourners they bow
And kneel and fall down flat to kiss the heaps
They have in trust under the splendid elm
Also marked with its tag a noble survivor
Civilization lifted my cat from the street
Gave him a name his shots and managed his death
Now Willie howls the loss from room to room
When people say I’m ashamed of being German
Said Arendt I want to say I’m ashamed of being
Human sometimes when Bobo made his copies
Of nothing I’d crumple one for him to chase
And combat in the game of being himself.
––Robert Pinsky
The power of naming, and the necessity of remembrance: these ideas help form the spine of Proverbs of Limbo, Robert Pinsky’s eleventh volume of poetry, set to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux this June. Here, Robert is focusing on the responsibility central to all poets––one whose roots extend to the Garden of Eden, where God commanded Adam to create names for all that surrounded him. (This is a God who, not incidentally, is called by seventy different appellations in Jewish spiritual literature, because His one ‘unknowable name’ contains such overwhelming power.) Poetry involves the sort of mnemonic potency where names and lived experiences can become indelibly enshrined––think: Homer’s bardic recitations; or the 305 Confucian Odes which every Chinese scholar was traditionally required to memorize. Astonishing, though, that such a creative act might bestow upon our loved ones the sort of enduring ‘fame’ usually reserved for a more rarefied pantheon of heroes. Many believe that speaking the names of the lost, remembering their ordinary exploits, ensures their enduring presence. And as was said by that 18th century Jewish mystic, the Baal Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name): “In memory lies the secret of redemption.”
Proverbs of Limbo (a name intended to bring to mind William Blake’s long poem “The Proverbs of Hell”) begins with “Poem of Names”; it introduces us to the theme of unearthing characters and events from the poet’s memory––the familial and historical; the famous, infamous, and ordinary. I first encountered today’s poem, “At Mt. Auburn Cemetery”, when it appeared in the New Yorker in 2021, and I remember that feeling of blissful disorientation it provoked. The situation of the piece was not unfamiliar––Mt. Auburn is, after all, America’s first rural or garden cemetery, a lovely 170-acre site where many people stroll among the handsome groves on a spring day––but the speaker’s state of mind might be less so. Doing without most of the expected punctuation, the poem seems, at first, as amorphous as the drifting clouds. The protagonist is hunting for the grave marker of a dear friend, Mike Mazur––the vibrant painter and printmaker with whom Robert collaborated on a handsome new version of Dante’s Inferno. (Dante is, of course, another acclaimed recorder of names; and Mike Mazur, I should add, was the husband of Gail, last week’s Red Letter poet. You see how infectious this can be, detailing names and connections!) But as the poet’s mind wanders, invoking both artist-friends and random strangers––enter Bobo, the dying cat of the Pinsky household. And suddenly we find ourselves wondering: just what drives any life to endure the slings and arrows we face each day? “When I held Bobo dying in my arms/ His green eyes told me I am not done yet”––even as life was slipping through those soft paws. And then he recalls Bobo’s old pastime, churning out blank copies from the poet’s printer, so he might chase and pounce on this (what else should I call it but) emptiness. This cannot help but seem a rueful commentary on all we living creatures pursue within our meager allotment of days.
During a poetry residency with fourth graders in Concord, MA, one student asked me if I was a famous poet. I replied that I could claim, in all modesty, to be the most famous poet currently residing on Bellington Street. (I said currently – no need to be cocky.) It’s an exceedingly rare condition for a contemporary in this profession, but Robert Pinsky is undoubtedly famous, throughout America and far beyond. I’m heartened that his renown is not only due to that trove of fine poetry collections (and of course his anthologies, literary criticism, and memoirs––such as the recent Jersey Breaks), but to a lifetime as a public poet, affirming the place the artform maintains in the civic life of a nation. He did this through three terms as the U.S. Poet Laureate, during which he created his immensely popular Favorite Poem Project. But this extends into his advocacy for verse as a whole––epitomized, perhaps, by his excellent Dante translation, but manifested as well in his continued collaborations with jazz and folk musicians, inviting the sisterhood of muses to join forces in performance. He has spent a lifetime being a diligent steward of our literary estate, bolstering its place in the temples of academia but also in the kitchens of quiet apartments; in barrooms and gymnasiums; on shop floors and hospital wards; and in the mouths of the so-called ordinary people making their way through this life. Let me invoke the name of another literary giant, Seamus Heaney, who wrote: “Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.” And this process is not about plunging ourselves to the depths of Hades, but reclaiming the lost through our faith in language and the power of remembrance. Such poetry ushers the departed back into daylight, at least for the moment. So I’ll gladly sing this joyful litany of names––Mazur and Baranczak; Confucius and Blake; Pinsky and, yes, sweet Bobo––to help intensify that light.
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
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