Somerville writer Patricia Wild: Brings the strands of the soul together in her new memoir.

 

Patricia Wild is a well known and respected writer, Quaker activist, journalist, and community organizer. She is an integral part of the beating heart of Somerville, and beyond. As long as I have known her, she has been a straight ,no chaser sort of woman-- with a built in shit detector. She is also a very spiritual woman, who questions herself and the world around her. In her new book, "Strands: An Apprenticeship with Grief and Loss,"  she goes past the bone and into the marrow of grief, loss, and our very souls. I caught up recently with her for an interview.

You described your new book as an "opus of the soul." Explain…

Sounds a little lofty, doesn't it! But I’m sure your readership knows this phenomenon—but perhaps uses different language. In the zone? Connecting with something greater than ourselves? Connecting with that gift we humans have been given: Consciousness? Our Muse showed up? There’s something about connecting with Truth wrapped in all of this, too, right? And trusting, as a spiritual practice, that the words will come.



Much of your book is centered around Quaker practice. What led you to become a Quaker?

A long story. But a pivotal and conveniently-brief story may explain a teeny bit: On Easter Sunday an elderly Quaker stood: “we don’t know what happened at Easter,” she said. "But we know this: There is Mystery.” I'd loved that!



The title refers to you as an apprentice of grief and loss. When does one move on from apprenticeship?

I wrote Strands during COVID. Subsequently, my beloved sister Deborah and my best-friend brother, Paul have died. So in a sense my immediate answer would be: Um, never? I did bring some gained understanding to these incredible losses in my life; some newly-acquired rituals helped. I freshly understood the importance of friends, community, sharing stories. But I also, humbled and overwhelmed by grief and loss, found a grief counselor.



One of the struggles you have had was around being a woman of privilege. Why couldn't you just accept that and move on?

I’m not wired that way, I guess. (And another reason why I joined a religious community in which folks at least try to walk the walk.) And to circle back to that marvelous thing called Consciousness, doesn’t that huge gift ask our species to be aware of and to acknowledge Life’s deeply-outrageous unfairnesses?



In this day and age, it is hard to find time for quiet reflection. But your Quaker practice involves this on a regular basis. What has changed in you from this reflection?

Um, everything? Early Friends called themselves Seekers of the Truth. My judgey-ness, my relationships, my confusions as to what I’m called to do in this overwhelmingly broken, broken world, how to answer someone’s snarky email; in quiet reflection sometimes I can find my way. I’m gifted with a sense of Truth. And one of the things about seeking is, rarely, rarely are we given The Whole Picture. An early Friend, Caroline Fox (who apparently struggled with depression) basically said, “Live up to the Light and more will be given.” In other words, inwardly ask/seek with curiosity and humility. And keep asking.(“How would my better angels response that snarky email?”) t It’s the process that’s important!



You quote Thomas Merton. Merton talks about mystical moments when he feels connected to all people-- he is part of a larger organism. How often do you feel that way?

Such moments are preciously rare. And, unfortunately, we’re not designed to be able to fully reconnect with such blissful and powerful moments as we did when we first experienced them. We remember them with incredible gratitude but they have faded. So unfair!



I am sure that you agree with Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living. Do you think there is a fear if we are in conversation with our soul...we might not like what we hear, and our complacency will be ruined?

What complacency? If we examine our lives fully.

Red Letter Poem #268

 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 #268

 

 

 

 

Tomatoes


It’s when I hear how one out of every three

Of the first Cambodian grocers in downtown Lowell

Had somehow managed to flee the Khmer Rouge

I think two things: Satanic Boott Mills, where alley

By alley my mother’s father once failed to dodge

The splatter of rotten tomatoes; and volley by volley

Those shooters who somehow missed my village uncle

As he scampered up goat-paths, eluding the KKE.



Row by palpable, swollen-to-bursting row

It all comes back in those ripe domátes my cousins

And I would pack into narrow cardboard cartons.

In my father’s grocery store, I pictured giant

Blood blisters, flush with a little cellophane window.

And elders of legend, running the tribal gauntlet.


––George Kalogeris




“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” A cogent if unsettling observation from novelist William Faulkner who knew something about the power of tribal memory. History and cultural inheritance is a central concern throughout the poetry of George Kalogeris––often delving into the world of ancestral Greece but, more specifically, exploring the mythos of his extended immigrant family that settled on the north shore of Massachusetts. And so it’s not surprising he felt an instant affinity when he learned that fully one-third of all the Cambodian grocers in the nearby city of Lowell emigrated to this country to flee the brutal regime of the Khymer Rouge. He’s heard this story before, in numerous incarnations. In the current political debate about immigration, that fact is too often minimized: the majority of people would never choose to leave their homelands if their very lives were not endangered. Some Americans may regard them as interlopers, come to ‘steal our jobs’; but, far more often, they’ve come to these shores to ensure that their children are not dragged down by political terror or abject poverty. And so the familial connections George teases out in today’s new poem extend beyond blood relations and include a broad range of people who are (as Liberty’s signature poem describes it) “yearning to breathe free.”



I was caught off-guard at first, seeing Boott Mills––a group of Lowell cotton mills founded in 1835––tagged with the appellation “Satanic” (William Blake’s “Jerusalem” suddenly echoing in the back of my mind). But it turns out it was not uncommon, during the early days of the Industrial Revolution, for people to consider this new mechanized production (coupled with the despoiling of our natural surroundings) as being an enterprise in the employ of Lucifer himself. The narratives in this poem are fragmentary, and so we are left to imagine what might provoke the local citizenry to pelt George’s grandfather with tomatoes––though we can easily deduce the message: these streets, these jobs, this freedom is ours, not yours. But quickly, the narrator’s mind skips back to the Greek Civil War, recalling stories of his uncle dodging bullets from Communist squads, high in the Peloponnese. It was yet another example of ideology tearing whole families apart, and bloodshed muddying the earth. And, just like that, the speaker jumps again and presents himself as a boy working in his father’s grocery store in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Clearly, the young poetic mind is already ripening––and as he packs the domátes, he’s able to perceive both sweet sustenance and deep-rooted suffering in what he holds in his hands.



An Emeritus Professor from Boston’s Suffolk University, George is a poet, scholar, and translator––recipient of the James Dickey Prize and the Meringoff Prize for Poetry. His last collection, Winthropos (Louisiana State University), is the inky embodiment of his historical and imaginative citizenship in both the Old and New Worlds. He is a craftsman of great skill and subtlety. Be honest: how many times did you have to read this little colloquial lyric before you realized it was a sonnet, replete with lovely off-rhymes and intricate patterning? But I must add one more detail to this biographical sketch: mere literary distinction does not reflect another, and quite essential quality of this individual and his life’s work: George is a deeply humane spirit who reaffirms the best aspects of our cultural legacy and the elements of its ancient Hellenic roots. And so a moment ago, laying down my pen, I found myself looking out the window at my wife’s garden where squash and green beans are flourishing, and her tomato vines are bent from the weight of the red ripening globes. It’s an image of plenitude which, sadly, is in stark contrast to the grim newspaper headlines I found waiting for me this morning. If we were better students of history, we might realize that, with a more enlightened perspective, our planet’s abundance can still sustain far more than we might imagine––and that our violent protective impulses only engender more of the same. Perhaps there ought to be a corollary to George Santayana’s famous dictum: that those who do learn from the past are doomed––like Cassandra (another echo from the Greeks)––to spend their days shouting out this warning, even when our countrymen seem hellbent on plunging into yet another bloody repetition.

 

   

 

 

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 #267

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 #267

Bullet Points

 

• Wait before purchase      because rage may subside,

                                          the moment pass, and besides,

                                          what’s the big hurry?

• 21 to buy                          because to vote, drink, sign a lease or

                                           be legally responsible for . . .

                                           because the human brain is still developing . . .

                                           because most shooters are not even . . .

• Ban bump stocks             because concert goers in sundresses,

                                           party shirts, stonewashed jeans

                                           and sandals fell where they danced,

                                           because shoppers with cupcakes in hand,

                                           or choosing fruit or helping someone

                                           load her groceries in the parking lot

• Red flag rules                  because those closest may know

                                          that he has been, or often is,

                                          or might even do . . .

• Background checks         because no child says he wants

                                           to grow up to be a killer,

                                           because the shooter’s posts

                                           may be a plea in disguise,

                                           because we can say NO

                                           to those whose eruptions splatter,

                                           rip apart the bodies of random . . .

• Ban assault rifles             because Star Wars backpack,

                                           pink sneakers, unicorn T-shirt,

                                           and their tender flesh, pulped

                                           beyond recognition in a spray of . . .

----------Bonnie Bishop

Sometime back, I accepted this poem from Bonnie Bishop for the Red Letters. Then I prayed I’d never publish it.

“Bullet Points” was written sometime after the absolutely heartbreaking mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, back in 2022. Bonnie hesitated to circulate it at the time, but it will appear in her new book Patience, her third full-length collection, forthcoming from Every Other Thursday Press. When she showed the poem to me, I told Bonnie I’d keep the poem in reserve and issue it after yet another shooting at a school: when our hearts would be broken yet again; and when something like a righteous anger would be necessary in the face of what (forgive my cynicism) I fully expect will be the standard response from many state and national leaders. When––for what feels like the thousandth time––the President and government officials appear in public to offer heartfelt prayers and hand-wringing, followed by promises that this time something will be done to prevent this continual nightmare. . .that is, as soon as we’d sufficient time to mourn. . .or another study can be commissioned. . .or when political fevers subside. . .or (and again I’ll beg your pardon) hell freezes over. The fact is as simple as it is unavoidable: there is just too much money, buying too much influence, solidifying passionate constituencies on the Right and the Left, to allow this issue to ever be put to rest––that is, unless we the people demand otherwise. Other countries have mobilized their national will to institute real change, so this is not impossible. Take the case of New Zealand, for example; following the 2019 mass shootings at a mosque in Christchurch, their elected officials, across parties, united to pass comprehensive gun regulations that showed an immediate reduction in firearm violence (though I was saddened to discover, in writing this, that right-wing political parties are now trying to roll back those laws). Up until now, we’ve clearly not shown such resolve. And meanwhile, yet another community will have to endure the unbearable pain

of seeing the most innocent among them forced to live in fear––or far, far worse––laid to rest inside diminutive caskets, while family and friends face the cold heavens and weep.

And I’ll ask your forgiveness yet again for magnifying your grief (or, perhaps, troubling your indifference) at a time of such awful tragedy. But I believe it is, in fact, one of the responsibilities of poets and artists: to convey uncomfortable truths, to challenge the imagination and stir the conscience––anything but simply allowing such violence to become normalized in our society. And so, out of sadness and revulsion, Bonnie assembled a PowerPoint display in fragmentary verse, complete with the ferocious irony of her bullet points. The poem coaxes us to sit with the reality of this situation, even as the media turn it into a pageant of communal suffering (and, let’s not forget, there’s money to be made in that as well). She employs a variety of verbal attacks, assaulting us with our own benign logic (“because to vote, drink, sign a lease or/ be legally responsible for . . .”); or with images we would most certainly rather forget (“and sandals fell where they danced…Star Wars backpack,/ pink sneakers. . .”). She even resorts to the underhanded tactic of simply reminding us that we have a role in all this––“because we can say NO”––hoping we might finally exercise the power that remains in the hands of a democratic electorate. When the poem concludes with the heartrending phrase “pulped/ beyond recognition in a spray of . . .“, it’s as if even the poet hadn’t the heart to complete the sentence, leaving that final ellipsis like bullet holes across window glass.

And so, just before 8:30 a.m., at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis––while the children were celebrating Mass during the first week of classes––another senseless act of brutality will add Annunciation’s name to the sad roster of places such as Columbine and Sandy Hook and Parkland and Robb Elementary and Virginia Tech and. . .. The inscription at the front of the Annunciation Church read: “House of God and the gate of heaven.” If you and I, my friends and fellow citizens, don’t do something to finally demand that sensible laws be crafted to at least lessen the possibility of further tragedies like this one, we ought not even pretend to ask anyone’s forgiveness. And those celestial gates we are so fond of imagining will never swing open to grant us peace.

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

Flashback Friday––RLP#19

 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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

 

The New England Poetry Club’s WE (too) THE PEOPLE poetry series this summer was a tremendous success!  Wonderful poets, enthusiastically received, by large audiences at the Longfellow Historical House.  If you missed any of the readings, you can still view the videos by searching under the series name on YouTube, or by visiting nepoetryclub.org and look for the We (too)… dropdown: Robert Pinsky, Stephanie Burt, Diannely Antigua, Richard Blanco, and Martha Collins.  (And, if I can don my salesman’s hat for a moment, there are still about two dozen of the beautiful We (too)… t-shirts remaining for sale, helping us to earmark funds for the 2026 season of this powerful diversity-affirming project.

 

So I’m taking a little R&R and sending out a Flashback Friday from early on in the history of the Red Letters––updated here and focusing on a stirring Covid-era elegy by Jo Pitkin.  It seems appropriate now, as the infection rate is once again climbing, and certain government officials want to employ the ostrich form of medical intervention: insert head firmly in sand, and the monsters will vanish.

 

Wishing you a safe and calm conclusion to the summer,

Steven

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flashback Friday––RLP#19

 

 

 

 

Luna Moths


On the day I realize my father

might be ill, two luna moths appear



like lime-green handprints stuccoed

on the white walls of my office studio.



This husband and wife come to me

from the boughs of my black walnut tree.



While their spread wings cure, eight

eyespots fix on my clumsy, worried haste.



Because the moths only live to mate,

they do not have mouths. They do not eat.



Flying at night, the moonly moths live

for a week. This is all the span they have.



Now, fading by day like scraps of fabric,

the pair rests. Their feathery antennae tick



lightly in June gusts. At twilight, a sheer

single hand almost waves at me as it flutters



across the pale gold disk fobbed firmly,

like a pocket watch, to the deep blue sky.

 

                                    — Jo Pitkin

 

 

Elegy. Acknowledgement of grief. Awareness of the void we feel in even the most beautiful of summer days. Over seven million families around the world—1.2 million in the United States alone—will forever hear that word, Corona, and feel every nerve in the body plucked like a bass string, reverberating deep. But elegy is one face of a two-sided coin, and the obverse is celebration—knowledge of how a certain face, a familiar voice made our day brim with abiding joy. We each carry our share of unvoiced elegies, for losses great and small; and we must also find in our awareness the possible celebration every new day presents, simply to maintain our humanity. Often a poet’s work assists us in both.



I am struck by Jo’s surprising use of language, subtle but affecting. Think of all the verb choices available to the poet when she describes those two luna moths––fastened? affixed?––no, “stuccoed/ on the white walls of my office studio.” And when those creatures are drying their wings in the sun, I never for a second doubted that her choice of “cured” was anything but a sad double entendre for what even a loving daughter cannot offer her father. Such an accumulation of telling details in the poem: that single pale hand fluttering; that shockingly brief lifespan; that dreamlike pocket watch in the sky––and before we realize it, the moth’s fate, the father’s, and our own are quietly intertwined.



I think of Jo Pitkin as an Arlingtonian—even though, after fifteen years, she traded the waters of Spy Pond for the majestic Hudson River in upstate New York. What I remember best were her tireless labors on the yearly Heart of the Arts Festival, back when the Arlington Center for the Arts was young, helping our town to enjoy the work of painters, dancers, musicians, craftspeople and, yes, poets. Jo’s poems have a painter's eye and a musician’s sense of rhythmic invention. She is the author of five full-length poetry collections including Commonplace Invasions where today’s poem first appeared. “Luna Moths” is sort of a pre-elegy when the prospect of her father’s loss first entered her consciousness. But in my reading, it’s a tribute to our sense of relationship—to the people we most care about and the places that summon our deepest attention. In pronouncing her quiet words, in imagining the brief beauty of the luna moth, we too might feel the complexity of our moment: its somber joy, its pained exultation.

 

 

 

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