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
As most of you have heard, this Sunday will
begin the culminating summer of the WE (too) THE PEOPLE poetry series, created
by by the New England Poetry Club and the Longfellow Historical House. If you want to learn more, here’s a link to
the page highlighting that program: https://nepoetryclub.org/we-too-the-people/
Wearing my other hat as NEPC president, I am
working to iron out last-minute arrangements for the event and writing the
introductions. So let me offer a Flashback
Friday Red Letter this week instead of a new installment. WE (too)… kicked off last summer with a
reading by a Former US Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky––and we are fortunate
enough to have another to start this year’s program, the wonderful Tracy K.
Smith. If you live in the Boston area, I
hope to meet many of you there on Sunday (but, for those at a distance, videos
of each WE (too)… event will be posted two days afterward). Here’s one of my favorite Red Letters
featuring a poem from Robert’s new collection––one that echoes the theme of the
WE (too) events: affirming that a diversity of voices is essential to the
vitality of our culture.
Flashback Friday:
Red Letter Poem #209
Branca
Ralph
Branca was the fifteenth of seventeen children.
This
poem is not the poem of “the speaker.”
His
father was an immigrant from Calabria.
These
words are those of Robert Pinsky. Speaking.
Branca
wore Dodger uniform number 13.
“Speaking”
is the punch line of a Jewish joke.
Some
Romans call Calabrians “Africani.”
Brooklyn
had its own daily, the Brooklyn Eagle.
At
eighty-five Branca learned about his mother.
He
was twenty-one when Robinson joined the Dodgers.
At
eleven I loved Robinson for his daring
Running
the bases. Stealing home. His fire.
Branca
was one of the few who befriended him.
I
was too young to understand his mission
The
fuel of that dancing to taunt the pitcher.
Robinson
never forgot Branca’s kindness.
What
the old man found out about his mother
Is
she was born a Jew in Hungary. Kati.
After
he gave up the most famous home run ever,
Back
in the clubhouse Branca lay weeping face down.
Kati
gave birth to seventeen Catholic children.
The
Giants won the pennant. 1951.
Branca
means “claw,” a fit name for a pitcher.
His
teammates thought it best that he cry alone,
But
“Only my dear friend Jackie, who knew me so well,
Came
over and put his arm around my shoulder.”
The
Nazis killed the aunts and uncles Branca
Didn’t
know existed until he was old.
42
in itself a nothing of a number.
The
Dodgers traded Branca to the Tigers.
Grief:
with its countless different ways and strains.
Glory:
a greater thing than success, but slower.
Some
of the Tigers who had been Giants explained
To
Branca how the Giants had stolen the signs
From
opposition catchers. The telescope
In
center field. Wires, buzzers. Branca chose not
To
talk about it. It’s all in Prager’s
book.
His
research unearthed Kati, those aunts and uncles.
The
Dodgers were taken from Brooklyn by their owner:
I,
Robert Pinsky, choose not to say his name.
I
didn’t live in Brooklyn but I knew the score.
I
knew it was a kind of underdog place.
Nowadays
once a year all Major Leaguers
Wear
Jackie Robinson’s number 42.
In
the joke, the person who answers the telephone
At
Goldberg, Goldberg and Goldberg keeps replying
That
Goldberg is out of the office. And so is Goldberg.
“Alright,
then let me talk to Goldberg.” “Speaking.”
Robinson
spoke to Branca: “Without you”
He
said, “We never could have made it this far.”
––Robert
Pinsky
“Sing
to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.” With this intriguing line, Homer introduces
his famed protagonist, Odysseus; but, had the bard been born in a later time,
he might have said much the same invoking Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher, Ralph
Branca (especially if he’d ever attempted to hit his curve ball.) Branca was a three-time All-Star whose dozen
years in the Majors were completely overshadowed when he gave up a single
fateful hit––baseball’s famous “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” Coming into the decisive game of the National
League Pennant race––October 3rd, 1951 at the New York Giant’s old
Polo Grounds, ninth inning, with his team nursing a 4-2 lead––Branca gave up a
three-run walk-off homer to Bobby Thomson, bringing his team’s glorious season
to ruin and breaking hearts from Greenpoint to Sheepshead Bay.
Aristocratic
men in ancient Greece lived by the code of kleos, or “fame”, aiming to
crown their names with the renown of a great warrior, while bringing honor to
the tribe. Again, not so very different
from the situation of those baseball players back in the Forties and
Fifties––way before today’s age of massive contracts for even mediocre
talents. To other New Yorkers, Brooklyn
was seen as something of a tribal enclave who heartily embraced their
‘neighborhood team’––as I often heard from my father when I was small. He’d tell me how he remembered sitting on his
front stoop in Flatbush and seeing the owner of the Dodgers (I’ll respect the
poet’s wishes and leave him nameless), strolling along giving out bleacher
tickets to the local kids. Life can
often be unfair, and Branca’s name, if it’s remembered at all, is forever
associated with defeat because of a single fastball. Yet America’s bard, Robert Pinsky sings the
praises of this good man whose faith and moral character were their own form of
triumph. One example: on opening day in
1947—which marked the major league debut of Jackie Robinson, baseball’s first
player of Color—Branca lined up on the field beside Robinson, when all other
players refused. It took some courage to
stand up for what was simply right, and a friendship quickly grew from
it. And so, in this poem from Robert’s
eleventh collection, Proverbs of Limbo, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux),
his couplets unscroll deliberately slow, offering us their refracted meditation
on honor, identity, and the private and civic experiences to which poetry
remains an essential response. The piece
is a sly intermixing of remembered events, curious bits of biography, and even
a corny joke; and only as we readers immerse ourselves in the poem, do the
elements coalesce into a more unified vision, mirroring perhaps how the
multi-faceted mind pieces together its reality.
The poem provides us with some insight into where we are today in our
American journey, and what’s enabled us (as the poet phrased it in that
concluding line) to make it this far.
Robert
has earned his own version of kleos, working as a poet, essayist,
educator, and three-term United States Poet Laureate. And, for goodness sakes, how many poets have
on their resumé an appearance in an episode of The Simpsons?! Fame indeed!
That attests to his public profile which he’s used again and again to
herald poetry’s essential role in our cultural wellbeing. Forty-five years ago, Robert published his
book-length poem An Explanation of America, crafted as an elaborate
letter to his daughter concerning the world she was entering. Near the conclusion he writes: “If I could
sail forward to see the streets/ Of that strange country where you will live
past me,/ Or further even by a hundred years;/ And walk those pavements with my
phantom steps. . .my courage/ Would fail, I think: best not to mount the steps/
Where I could leave no footprint in the snow…”.
It is fortifying to both poet and reader that such imaginative courage
carries him onward, and his explanations of the tortuous American
mythology continue––speech directed toward that unimaginable future. And those footprints in the snow––they’ll
belong to newcomers who are still carrying poems like this one.
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
* The weekly installment is also available at
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 visit the Red Letter
archives at: https://StevenRatiner.com/category/red-letters/
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