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 #256
Waypoint
Dinner over, we went outsideto smoke, glasses in hand, abstract
sphinxes at loose ends.
The conversation didn’t gel.
The silence stretched to ache
until we spoke of the Romantics,
of Lake Country loam, and silage.
Of Coleridge coining soulmate, narcissist,
of rags and bones stored high in haylofts.
Of spleen, and grace, and grief.
Of what thoughts point toward.
––Wyn Cooper
“In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.”
––T. S. Eliot:
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
My friend Michael––a medical doctor but with broad academic interests––is fond of the term overdetermined. The concept has roots in mathematics, psychology, and anthropological studies, and refers to a situation where a single observed effect can be achieved through a whole range of possible causes. But, as the word is used by literary critics like I.A. Richards, in his 'context theorem of meaning,' the notion is intended to highlight the importance of ambiguity in a work of art. “Freud taught us that a dream may mean a dozen different things; he has persuaded us that some symbols are, as he says, 'over-determined' and mean many different selections from among their causes.” Considering that Wyn Cooper’s poems are built on concrete, closely-observed images, his verse manages to shimmer with overdetermination. As with a mirage in the desert, we see and experience something as we approach the oasis, only to have it change or vanish altogether the closer we get. What remains afterward, though, is a kind of thirst for the well of meaning we sense is there, just beyond our reach. And the deeper our journey into the poem’s terrain, the thirst only increases. Yet in the alluring perhaps of his poetry, we often discover something about what was driving our emotional yearning in the first place.
It would be misguided to impose, through one of my commentaries, my singular perspective on any Red Letter poem. But I hope that––by offering a glimpse of how I find myself engaged with, confounded by, welcomed into a poet’s little ink-universe––I might hint at the possibility of veiled passageways, of unforeseen destinations, some that didn’t even exist in the reader’s mind before their eyes began pacing across the poem’s opening lines. And so, at the start of “Waypoint,” I found myself imagining the sort of gathering depicted here: a dinner party? A literary celebration? A wedding? A funeral? And as the guests meander outside “to smoke, glasses in hand, abstract/ sphinxes at loose ends” we encounter the social awkwardness familiar to most of us: after all, what can be said among people who don’t really know each other? In my experience, that feeling of being adrift is especially unsettling in an intellectual crowd (and of course most poets are intellectuals, though some might claim otherwise.) In this instance, somehow the English Romantic poets pop up as a subject of conversation––and I can’t help noticing how the music of the poem intensifies (ache, and spoke, and Lake.) Now we’re thinking about the Lake District in Cumbria, Coleridge and Wordsworth, the entrancing power of the natural world and our desire (and often inability) to feel at home there. Language itself is part of this human landscape––and since Wyn mentions soulmate and narcissist, I find myself desiring the former (casting about, perhaps, among this gathering?) but fearful of the latter (to be cornered in conversation by some self-consumed bore or, even more terrifying, to discover that I am one.)
Then, amid a range of possibilities like grace and grief, the poet slides one final, unassuming thought into our consciousness: “Of what thoughts point toward.” And after countless readings of this poem, I’ve yet to make up my mind about where that leaves us. Are we witnessing the fatuous attempts of our fragile consciousness to latch onto something, to keep from going under––like Eliot’s aristocratic women blithely talking about great art? Or are we finally allowing the world in (I was picturing towering pine trees, scattered stars across a night sky), and experiencing some of the encompassing delight that the Romantics wrote about? Are these shared thoughts rising higher (along with the smoke trails from our cigarettes), reminding us that our lives here might indeed be at a waypoint between existence and. . .well, whatever waits for us beyond this all-too-brief lifetime? Or are words only a pathway back inside the labyrinthian mind––the only true beyond we’ll ever know being our opaque selves? As a poet, Wyn is assured enough not to cross out any possibility but to offer, in that gentle ambiguity, the impetus to keep questioning. This poem, I’m happy to say, will be included in his sixth collection, The Unraveling, which will appear in 2026 from White Pine Press. He also recently enjoyed the surprise––and splendid honor––of opening a copy of the new anthology, A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker, and finding his work included. Wyn’s poised and enigmatic poems conjure their own version of “the mermaids singing, each to each”––only, after a second or third reading, those, voices begin to resemble our own.
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
@stevenratiner.bsky.social
and on Twitter
@StevenRatiner
And coming soon:
a new website to house all the Red Letter archives at StevenRatiner.com
