Red Letter Poem #262

 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 #262


Those Are Not My Grades


My nephew, may his wildest dreams come true,

confronted by his parents with his teenage grades

shot back, Those are not my grades;

immediate, definitive, assured.



Was that when they were fixing up the house?

Now Matt himself’s a major renovator

always improving reality

which admittedly could use a boost. Yesterday, for instance,



stopped at a light

glancing at the rearview mirror

there it was: Reality

by which I mean my current upper arm



resting on the rolled-down-window ledge––

wrinkled, loosened, wrecked.

That was near the lot where Masse’s Hardware used to be

now waiting for a Lowe’s or some damn other piece



of corporate shit to come along.

Will this light never turn?



People, if you’re out there,

listen up!

These are not my arms!





––Linda Bamber




OK, show of hands: who thinks the teenage nephew in this poem’s spotlight is simply trying to brazen his way out of parental trouble with that “Those are not my grades” declaration? And how many believe he is making a kind of political argument, that grades do not define either his person or his school performance? Perhaps some are entertaining the possibility that the young man is taking a philosophical, or even spiritual, stance about the very nature of objective reality and the labels we place on it? That single line of poetry could easily be an emotional Rorschach test, challenging a reader’s assessment of human nature. But one thing is certain: we cannot help but smile as we puzzle it all out. In so many of Linda Bamber’s poems, the strange situations she presents––and the unique tone of voice with which she addresses her readers–– provoke quiet laughter. But that humor is often nettled with the awareness of mortal suffering, how we tend to be captive within our minds’ tangled trains of thought. The result: we are made aware that our own vulnerable hearts were not as walled-in as we might have imagined. If the psychic DNA of Anne Sexton and Joan Rivers could be interwoven in a laboratory, the result might well sound like Linda Bamber.



In the span of the opening two lines, ‘dreams’ and a ‘confrontation’ with authority come into play­­––instantly upping the emotional ante. After all, many of the choices we made (or were made for us) occurred so early in life, our days seemed almost predetermined. This poem is a little meditation about what we expect from existence and how our expectations continually confound. Veering between wry and spritely, the poem takes turn after sharp turn, jostling readers in our easy chairs. Were you startled when time suddenly lurched forward and, we assume, the young boy is suddenly a grown-up like us, ‘renovating’ this beleaguered world (which can certainly use the make-over)? But then the scene shifts again, and now the speaker is driving in her car, temporarily frozen at a red traffic light. She glimpses, in the rearview, her arm “resting on the rolled-down-window ledge––/ wrinkled, loosened, wrecked.” This made me think: how often, when approaching a mirror, do I half-expect to see my young self staring back, shocked instead at the weathered countenance waiting there? How did we ever convince ourselves that we understood the nature of lived experience? Amazement should be our default. Why didn’t someone warn us of all this early on––how the safe and familiar evaporate all-too-quickly, giving way to “some damn other piece// of corporate shit,” right before our eyes? Forced to hold still and reflect, we find ourselves praying for the freedom to gun the engine and lurch ahead––even if we’re not sure where we’re going. And so Linda, dangling from a psychic thread, exclaims: “People, if you’re out there,/ listen up!”––talk about an existential crisis!––“These are not my arms!” Indeed! Self-awareness butts heads with a childlike sense of hope. I found myself thinking: these are not my weary eyes, not my mind trembling at the prospect of what the years do to our fragile selves. Perhaps today, you and I should write our own report card; and why not cast it in the spasmodic rhythms of a free verse poem. Should all our F’s be expunged, replaced perhaps with the much more forgiving ‘needs improvement’? Are we still trying to fake it until we make it, hoping some divine parentage will be taken in by our bravado? Or maybe we’ll honestly face our reflections in this darkly-lit mirror of a poem––and if that isn’t deserving of an A, I don’t know what is.



I remember, years back, the unexpected delight when I stumbled upon Linda’s first collection, Metropolitan Tang. For a time after that, she focused on fiction and released Taking What I Like (both books issued by David R. Godine.) She spent her entire teaching career as an English Professor at Tufts University. While we anxiously await a second volume of poetry, Linda continues writing and publishing verse, fiction, essays, and reviews­­––appearing in such places as The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Agni, The Nation, and The New York Times. Because of the light touch within her poetry, and baseline of compassion, it came as no surprise to learn that she was a practicing Buddhist. Ideas of non-attachment slip into unexpected moments because, after all, this is not really my life. Or is it?

  

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

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* 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

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and on Twitter          

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And coming soon:

a new website to house all the Red Letter archives at StevenRatiner.com