Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: Jack Stewart

Red Letter Poem #315

An Unnoticed Moment in Eden:

the Apostrophe’s Fall

“That fallen leaf from the ruined garden”

––from: “Grief’s” by Steven Ratiner

Still high above the ground, in

The moment of someone else’s weakness,

When it is still too early for

The woodchucks and mice and trout,

The beetles with their shining elytra,

To know they are now dying,

The apostrophe has just detached

And is surprised and unaware

It now means loss or is possessed

By the serpent-S following,

And is about to start the slow

Descent, to drift into its

Increasing shadow, into

That twilight-dimming space

The dead will own.

––Jack Stewart

Before I can discuss my response to Jack Stewart’s startling little mythology, I must begin with the literary elephant in the room: the epigraph. Poets, of course, use epigraphs for a whole range of purposes. Sometimes it’s to invite the work of another poet into the reader’s mind––a choral background awaiting a new soloist to take the stage. Or it might signal the harmony or antiphony of thought between an older work and one’s own. But often, it is a small homage to acknowledge that some element in another’s poem so thoroughly entered this writer’s consciousness that it triggered a new creation in response. I can say that, over the years, I’ve tipped my hat in this manner dozens of times. But when I received “An Unnoticed Moment. . .” from today’s poet, who I’ve gotten to know through his Red Letter contributions, I was shocked to realize that this was the first time I’ve ever been a recipient of this gesture. We forget, sometimes, that when we put our work out into the world, there are actual readers who might lay claim to these poems, use them for unanticipated purposes––and even, in the most intense instances, feel the need to respond to what they’ve discovered on the page. I felt deeply honored. . .and then immediately fearful: what if I didn’t actually like how Jack used my line as a jumping-off point? But I’d nothing to worry about: this poet took some thematic elements from my recent collection, Grief’s Apostrophe, and used them to challenge his own vision––about the grammar of loss and the power of a simple punctuation mark.

Among other things, my collection explored the way we struggle to carry our deepest emotions into language, and how every element at our disposal must be used in an attempt to portray and illuminate. In one poem, I used a metaphor for the apostrophe that seems to have lodged in Jack’s ear: “That fallen leaf from the ruined garden.” Such powerful meaning to be embedded in so diminutive a symbol; it signals both possession and a placemark for absence. Somehow Jack found himself within an Edenic space where all once seemed possible––but now some dire change was taking place. In his poem, the leaflike punctuation mark hovers “high above the ground”––that earthly domain from which, according to the Biblical text he’s called to mind, we arise and to which we return. Circumstance is about to lay claim to some unsuspecting pronoun: “The moment of someone else’s weakness.” The poem has brought to mind the essence of all mortal frailty, and the passage from an inherent grace to an inevitable decline. I loved those lines of enumeration––“The woodchucks and mice and trout,/ The beetles with their shining elytra”––which also echo the primal human task of naming all we see (even as we are reminded that we creatures must share the same fate). “The apostrophe has just detached/ And is surprised and unaware/ It now means loss or is possessed/ By the serpent-S following…”. Here, the apostrophe itself is a consciousness whose descent signals the great transformation––and I found myself smiling ruefully at that “serpent-S,” as if all fruitful knowledge was embodied in every mouthful of language.

Today’s poem marks Jack Stewart’s seventh appearance in the Red Letters (which may be a record). His fine first book, No Reason, was published in the Poeima Poetry Series––and, over the years, his work has appeared in scores of literary journals including Poetry, the New York Quarterly, and the Iowa Review, as well as international journals in Ireland, Austria, and Italy. Formerly a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology, he taught creative writing in Fort Lauderdale at the Pine Crest School––but, for the first time, I’m having to shift that verb to the past tense. After four decades as an educator, working with students at various levels and educational centers, Jack has recently retired. My hope is that this new expansive time will bring us closer to an anticipated second collection. I love how Jack’s poems celebrate the creative impulse, play within the endless possibilities of human experience––but do not shy away from the most challenging discoveries along the way. In today’s piece, that inky curl––like a dried leaf or a wisp of imagination––is about to “start the slow/ Descent, to drift into its// Increasing shadow, into/ That twilight-dimming space/ The dead will own.” Nothing we can do will prevent that fall––but the attention we bring to the moment, and the way we are able to memorialize the experience in language, feels as if we’ve done more than simply surrender. Tell me: is it too much to think that all we commit––to each other, to that sacred ground––renews the garden’s fertility? (Apostrophe-S––because we belong to that green beauty even still, as it belongs to us.)

The Red Letters

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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 #265

The Wicked Witch of the West

Goes to Seattle

I wasn’t always like this. As a girl, I loved

The shower, my wet hair heavy on my shoulders,

The warm soapy water on my back and legs.

It wasn’t like now, with fear and bitterness.

When I got my power, no one told me

I would have to sacrifice something,

And not of my choosing, which is why

When I received my talent during a thunderstorm—

You know the rest. My skin turned green from lament,

And I have come here to risk oblivion,

To sink into what I loved for so long, the one

Element that could return my heart to me.

I stare out the window at the rain pouring down

But have not yet decided how I will do it.

Will I run to the coffee shop next door, acting

Like I forgot my umbrella? Then take my

Hat off and stand under the edge

Of the awning and let the water drip

On my bare head? To feel my body

Run down itself until I am nothing

But what I have missed for so long.

To flow in a direction I don’t yet know,

But which no one can change,

Or ever take away.

––Jack Stewart

I know what you’re thinking: a little late, isn’t it? Why didn’t Steven run this poem back in March, when the Academy Awards were all abuzz with Jon Chu’s movie and, at the drop of a pointy hat, audiences couldn’t help but belt out: “I think I'll try/Defying gravity!” It’s true, I do on occasion tie Red Letter poems to seasons and cultural events, making real life the backdrop for a literary experience. And I’ll admit it: that was my plan all along when I first received Jack Stewart’s surprising poem about the possibility of washing a life free of its history, and transforming it into something new. But then I feared that it would be subsumed in the overarching drama of Broadway and Hollywood––the rather grand spectacle that Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel has unleashed on popular culture. Maguire’s brilliant idea was to shift our perspective on L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, and consider what made the Wicked Witch wicked in the first place. Such a dramatic lineage resulted: from Baum’s turn-of-the-century classic to numerous plays, other books, movies, musicals, and even now to this poem. It’s more than a little thrilling to witness one artistic vision demonstrating the generative power of cultural crosspollination. So I decided to wait, wanting readers to have a clean slate (or as much as that’s ever possible) when Jack’s more modest vision––stripped of stage lights and orchestration––first stepped out onto their inner stage.

From the very first, I loved the poet’s recasting of this little mythology, setting it into a contemporary American landscape which we all inhabit. I remember, when I was twenty, California was brimming with its ‘Summer of Love’ (younger readers: Google it), and I hitchhiked cross-country to experience my generation's version of Oz. For young people in recent decades, Seattle and the Pacific Northwest seem to have been cast with that same aura of possibility. So who exactly is this woman Jack’s introducing us to––perhaps leaving behind a hot and arid place (like, say, Jack’s South Florida) and lighting out for the West (a decidedly greener and rainier terrain)? And what’s caused her aversion to the cleansing/comforting power of a warm shower? Did you find yourself considering all the ways this once-happy girl might have come to feel her life sullied? Or was that “power” she’s attained simply the change from innocence to womanhood, with all the apprehensions brought on by her life in a society where a woman’s autonomy can be challenged by the male powers-that-be? And so she’s journeyed to a locale where precipitation is a common occurrence––“come here to risk oblivion,/ To sink into what I loved for so long…”. Reading (no, thinking her thoughts) through this persona poem, I began feeling the many ways my own life has calcified, grown comfortable in its old ways––even while knowing how certain elements were never ‘in the plan’ and may not be conducive to furthering my dreams. This woman is willing to risk a kind of dissolution––“until I am nothing/ But what I have missed for so long”––and I’m left wondering what I’d be willing to risk in order “To flow in a direction I don’t yet know,/ But which no one can change…”. Our protagonist’s skin turned green from lament; mine might be more out of envy.

Jack has become a frequent contributor to the Red Letters. Formerly a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology, he now teaches writing in Fort Lauderdale at the Pine Crest School. His first collection, No Reason, was published in the Poeima Poetry Series in 2020. New work has appeared in numerous literary journals like Poetry, the New York Quarterly, and the Iowa Review, garnering nine nominations for the Pushcart Prize. I love how, in his poetry, Jack twists situations, charges syntax, and continually defies expectations––anything to keep the reading experience fresh. I can easily imagine his protagonist, beneath the cataract descending that shop awning, feeling herself reborn into a wholly new circumstance. Is she singing to herself: “Something has changed within me/ Something is not the same…”? Or maybe she’s more old school and––watching gulls and osprey angling through the downpour, heading back toward the sea––she’s awaiting the rainbow which must surely come. Is she entertaining the possibility of wings to carry her beyond all expectation, maybe thinking: “Why, oh why can't I?