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 #239
Askew, Akimbo
Charcoal trees drawn down a papery sky
bisect the windbreak, water sketched behind.
From the marsh a Great Blue Heron eyes me.
I hear bloodied horsemen pound arterial roads
where all my sorrows incandesce, and find
I’m as alone in the world as I’ve ever been.
Genealogies of leaves become encampments,
lacquered by rain on graves at the root-foot
of damaged new-growth trees: the Emerald Ash Borer
has carved labyrinthine and curving maze-end scars
on the trunk and limbs in Hubbardston, Massachusetts
for two hundred acres and through the conservancy.
The mackerel sky and dusk appearing so soon
no longer catches me off guard. Winter is approaching.
New England surrenders. I am wed to the world
with a plain, cut-paper ampersand––fragile, slight,
subtle as a footfall of fog disturbing salt marsh hay.
I miss the sea. My old life. A dog. A man. A house.
––Melissa Green
Melissa Green is a lifer. I believe she was born to be a poet, devoted all her creative and emotional energies to the practice, and persisted long after circumstances in her life made such (dare I use the word?) spiritual discipline all but impossible. Her first book, The Squanicook Eclogues, was hailed as an astonishing achievement––both for its formal brilliance and its almost-mythological portrayal of her beloved landscape in Central Massachusetts. But then illness and hospitalization devastated Melissa’s budding career, and it seemed that this incipient dream might be cut short. But again and again over the decades, Melissa would work her way back to the notebook, back to verse of such imaginative discernment and lyrical richness, it provided the ballast through even the most challenging of storms. Her diminutive collection, Fifty-Two––consisting of fifty 5-line poems (each with a dramatic caesura central to its unfolding)––demonstrates the wholeness of intent and brilliance of execution that, to my mind, warrants the term masterpiece. Sadly, that collection is long out-of-print––but if you run across a copy in a used bookstore, trust me: snatch it up immediately. Fortunately, sometime back, Arrowsmith Press published Magpiety: New & Selected Poems which contains a generous sampling of that and other collections.
Here's one of my favorites from Fifty-Two which, to my mind, bears some relationship to today’s Red Letter offering:
The Eater of Paper, The Drinker of Ink
With my pen point, I dig up the watermark, a white peony soft on my tongue.
In that sweet wafer I taste a cluster of birches, cherry, oak. I swallow acres
of forest, seed pods like limpets at my heart.
The nib plunges into a black current.
Its unguent on my lips, I suck down the streets of Evangeline, the drowned parishes
of Katrina, these lines an alphabet drawn from a corpse’s single alchemized hair.
Sometimes it feels as if we are only tethered to this existence by the imaginative investment we make. For such a poet, the watermark of a written page might actually become her communion wafer, providing for a momentary salvation. And the exacting description of one’s surroundings becomes a necessary act of self-perpetuation (even if that bond is as modest as an ‘&’ logogram.)
Receiving a batch of new poems from Melissa, I put up a pot of coffee, ease into my favorite chair, and allow myself to savor the sort of sonic complexity that’s becoming rarer in much contemporary poetry. Lines like “I hear bloodied horsemen pound arterial roads// where all my sorrows incandesce” make me know I am now traversing Ms. Green’s territory, and I’d better keep eyes open, my mind alert. Allow a musical phrase like “Genealogies of leaves” to simmer in your ear for a moment: four long-e sounds amid the lapping of those l’s––sheer pleasure! But like Emily Dickinson or Lorine Niedecker––two poets I think of as Melissa’s forebearers––the intent here extends far beyond lush music and entrancing imagery. Something vital is at stake, as we experience a woman’s life, long after romantic notions have been weathered away: “I’m as alone in the world as I’ve ever been.” Of course, Melissa is not alone in her losses––I’m sure any of us with years under our belts knows how time takes a bite out of our lives. As the New England landscape surrenders to winter, implacable as an invading army, the poet can make this startling statement: “I am wed to the world/ with a plain, cut-paper ampersand”––and we, too, are reminded how precarious the day can feel (though most have the luxury of pretending otherwise.) The poem reaches its resolution with a series of utterly plain but heartfelt declarations: “I miss the sea. My old life. A dog. A man. A house.” Bringing language to this litany of absences––mustn’t this bring a measure of comfort? Enough? My answer about that seems to change with every reading. But I can say this, though, without reservation: Melissa’s life-long literary pursuits have enriched my life immeasurably. I feel a certain pride to be included in the same inky guild as such an artist. My hope is that her next book (and the book after that) will continue to sustain poet and reader alike.
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 BlueSky
@stevenratiner.bsky.social
and on Twitter
@StevenRatiner
And coming soon:
a new website to house all the Red Letter archives!
