Red Letter Poem #312

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 #313

 

 

 

 

Ode To Café Pamplona

Cambridge, MA  1959-2020

 

 

Gracias a ti, Josefina Yanguas Perez,

for your subterranean sanctuary

its white stucco walls and low ceilings

lit warmly yellow,

windowsills alive with geraniums,

laughter, pontifications,

writings, readings, ideas,

 

where your diminutive Basque body

floats in each day, nodding kaixo or hola

to David, who writes a poem for you and Lorca;

to linguist, Lee, sipping espresso,

uttering Alhamdulillah in any language

as a loner listens and a woman

in a black beret writes at a far table;

 

and always professors and students wrangling

over politics, music, philosophy,

where language reigns over the coffee grinder’s growl,

chairs scrape the checkered floor by patrons

coming and going for communitas and caffeine,

bowls of Iruña gazpacho, flat pork sandwiches, pastries—

orders awaiting young male waiters, lean

as their thin black ties.

 

 

                                          ––Kathleen Granchelli

 

 

 

 

 

Submitting her poems to the Red Letters, Kathleen Granchelli could never have predicted the nature nor intensity of my response––especially toward one piece in particular.  But just the mention of that name––Café Pamplona­­––triggered a cascade of vivid memories: it’s 1975, and I have moved (inexplicably) from sunny California back to the frigid Northeast.  The bookstore job I managed to snag nets me the princely sum of $80 per week––and thus any entertainments in my free time needed to be just that: free, or very inexpensive.  I discovered that Harvard’s excellent Fogg Art Museum offered complimentary admission; I relished my idylls in their galleries.  Then I’d enjoy an hour in the poetry section of one of the numerous used bookshops that existed at the time around Harvard Square––browsing is another marvelous low-cost delight.  Inspired, and seeking sustenance, I’d repair to Café Pamplona––a small below-ground coffeehouse with true Old World charm.  That’s because the owner, Josefina Yanguas, modeled the place on the café life in the city of her beloved Spanish home.  Two bucks bought me a modest lunch and two hours sheltered from the cold. (I see you looking doubtful; a cappuccino for sixty cents!  A buck-and-a-quarter added a media noche sandwich to the order––with the remaining coins left on the saucer as a gratuity!)  I could read and write undisturbed because, if ever a courtly waiter approached a lingering customer, it was only to ask if he might bring another glass of water.  One word instantly comes to mind when I think of the Pamplona and, unsurprisingly, there it is right there at the outset of Kathleen’s poem: sanctuary.

 

But even if you’d never been a patron during the café’s 60-year lifespan, this poet’s wealth of carefully-observed detail makes you feel you’re seated at a table beside the whitewashed walls, idling perhaps on your own day off.  This is a people-watching paradise so perhaps you, too, would soon be sketching thumbnail portraits of Cambridge luminaries and the dashing demimonde––inspired by the sepia fresco by Conger Metcalf adorning the corner wall.  The rat-a-tat cadences in Kathleen’s poem perfectly reflect the companionable chatter of “professors and students wrangling/ over politics, music, philosophy,/ where language reigns over the coffee grinder’s growl…”.  At a time when I could not afford a writing studio, Pamplona was not only my atelier but the shared incubator for a profusion of ideas and visions, forming quite a fine brother/sisterhood.  Among others, there’s a mention of the café in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake.  And yes, that’s Amanda Palmer, of the Dresden Dolls, singing this lyric within “Truce,”: "You can have Africa, Asia, Australia, as long as you keep your hands off Café Pamplona."  How many artworks, movies, memoirs––not to mention love affairs––first took root in Josefina’s version of a public salon? 

 

And now add Kathleen to that list of bards celebrating this dearly-missed meeting place.  Perhaps that’s her, seated (virtually) by one of the few windows that allow a bit of sunlight into this espresso-scented cavern.  Shall I make an introduction?  For most of her career, Kathleen led the communications and community relations office for a not-for-profit R&D organization, following four years teaching students at the high school and college levels.  But upon retirement, her passion for poetry was reignited; her work has since appeared in such magazines as Mediterranean Poetry, Persimmon Tree, Seven Bridges Digital Magazine, and The Orchards Poetry Journal––many of her pieces reflecting her experience living in Australia and Greece.  Her chapbook, For the World, She Said, is slated to be published by Kelsay Books later this year or early in 2027.  All this reminds me of the almost infinite variety of reasons we are drawn to the work of certain poets: because of kindred memories; unimagined but enticing landscapes; or stylistic flourishes that strike some hidden emotional chord.  On first reading Kathleen’s poems, I was struck by this revelation: how much we have in common, often unaware.  How frequently we discover that some stranger’s vivid life-experience, their simmering dreams, their distant yet persistent music, creates a sympathetic vibration with our own minds.  How many passing close by us this very day once shared the same park or crowded café, the inexorable pull of a first line of poetry in their ear like some siren song?  A poem, too, is a gathering place for strangers to commune.  Thank you, Josefina!  Thank you, Kathleen!  The next round’s on me!

 

 

 

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:

Red Letter Poem #312

 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 #312

 

 

 

Cancer Qasida

1.


Praise to the paper gown, vinyl table

sprayed down, still sticky when I sit.



Praise, O nurse in purple shoes,

kindest finger on my bruise, asking



questions to ensure I’m me

and no one else. I’m me. I’m me,



on every floor, in every room

where I repeat name, date of birth



and she checks off a corresponding

doom and doom’s activities, which I praise.



2.



Praise three members of the high school

jazz quartet, studiously tuning in the lobby,



and the man waiting for his wife, counting

almonds into a baggy, the man counting



lengths of sterile plastic tubing. Praise

the doctor who looks so caring and



the doctor behind her, the carousel

of wheelchairs in the hallway—praise them.



I’ve been a different me

since the biopsy needle



became the compass-needle,

since the doctor told me I’m lucky



not to be dying any faster.

O praise the abyss those words split



open under me—praise it.

I’ve learned the shape of the abyss



in which I hear the music

of cancer and faster,



in which I’m gently sent home

to water the dahlias, to let



my nerveless fingers trace two new

freckles (praise them!) on my son’s face.



3.



O praise the music, praise tomorrow’s

sorrow and not-sorrow, praise the mind



narrowed with knowledge, praise

the spells I’ve made and borrowed: love,



luck, forgiveness, fairness, faith

in the idea a “me,” in the idea there will be



another and another day. There’s a cold disk

pressed to my chest, a colder needle in my vein,



a mother making lists, as if it can change everything.

Praise the spell a list creates, praise



the spell of the IV drip, the pills and the pills

to help you tolerate the pills. Praise the gloved hands



that clean up what you can’t keep down. Praise all

the sweating, heaving, freezing, nauseated ones



closing their eyes against this frame, all the ones

who came and sang this song before me, all



the ones still waiting and waiting and waiting.

In my marrow I feel the woman silently crying



in the curtained cubicle beside me,

the man upstairs putting on a brave face for his son,



the family playing cards in reception, the duet

laughing somewhere down the hall—



I can offer them nothing but praise

on the way to the paradise where we’ll meet.

 

                                          ––Kirun Kapur

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s Letter is about cancer. . .and praise.  At first, you might assume these two words do not/ought not even exist in the same universe.  While modern medicine has become much more skilled at detecting and treating this multifaceted category of disease, just the mention of ‘the c-word’ still casts a pall over any conversation.  But in the case of Kirun Kapur, a poet of tremendous sensitivity and insight, she is using the heightened consciousness of a poem to demand more: from her response to her own diagnosis and treatment; from her relationships––not only with those she dearly loves, but with all who pass through her days.  I believe Kirun is also stretching the boundaries of what she’s prepared to bring to the page, taking to heart the duty that Ralph Waldo Emerson said falls to every practitioner of this ancient art form: "The poet is the person who re-creates the common, who is the public voice of the private heart, and who praises the ordinary."  In “Cancer Qasida,” the ordinary ordeal involved in long-term medical treatment––especially for any serious illness––reminds us that it is possible to be both broken- and great-hearted within a single moment.

 

While the speaker of a poem and the text’s author are not identical, I never had a moment’s doubt that, in this case, the literary was being informed by authentic first-hand experience.  And though I’d never suggest that the poem itself was the source of the subject’s courage and determination, I cannot help but believe it fortifies her spirit.  Kirun is creating an externalized platform for her own deepest self, and for others in similar circumstances.  I’d say that the process she is engaged in echoes Einstein’s breakthrough formulation.  The physical and emotional energy in this painful experience (and in the poet’s exacting portrayal) is being converted into matter (ink on paper, or images on a computer screen) so that, when shared with some stranger, the material can be converted back into psychic energy.  The reader may, in turn, use this to power their own thoughts and actions, to touch on the challenges of their own unfolding day.  E=MC² indeed!

 

Kirun chose to create a contemporary version of the qasida––a pre-Islamic Arabic verse form that has since spread throughout the Middle East––and though she dispenses with the set rhythm and single repeating rhyme, her poem chimes with repetition and a heightened musicality; I suspect that a traditional poet writing in, say, Persian or Urdu, might feel a certain kinship.  And the three-part form often forms a journey, ranging from court life to the marketplace, but usually culminating in an act of praise.  Here, the specificity of images like that “paper gown,” “vinyl table,” and the nurse’s “purple shoes” can be, by turns, both menacing and marvelous.  But the brio of her unexpected shifts in context is nothing short of breathtaking––“from biopsy needle” to “compass-needle,” and then the oncologist’s comment that “I’m lucky not to be dying any faster.”  Who else but a poet would follow such thoughts as they morph from the doctor’s dispassionate assessment to “the shape of the abyss// in which I hear the music/ of cancer and faster”––and then on to the act of watering the dahlias or touching her son’s newly-freckled face as an intimation of “paradise”?

Kirun is the author of four books of poetry, including: Women in the Waiting Room (from Black Lawrence Press), which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.  Last year, I Ride Upon a Tiger won the Benjamin Saltman Prize, and will be published by Red Hen Press in 2028.  Today’s poem was a finalist for the Amy Lowell Prize from the New England Poetry Club and was subsequently nominated and awarded a Pushcart Prize.  Kirun serves as editor at the venerable Beloit Poetry Journal, and directs the creative writing program at Amherst College.  She grew up between Honolulu and New Delhi, and now lives along the banks of the Merrimack River.  Her poem today rings with the litany: “praise”––though the purpose of those imperatives keeps shifting.  Because Kirun’s literary experience is far-ranging, she understands that in many of the creation stories pivotal within world religions, humankind begins in a garden and ends in a kind of paradise.  But how we live in-between determines the nature of our experience; it either fosters or thwarts the possibility of achieving wisdom and deep (if ephemeral) happiness.  Though we may use a multiplicity of names and gestures in our attempt to address divinity, there is great commonality in what we are all yearning for.  Perhaps, like superstitious children, we hope things like counting and incantatory list-making will somehow safeguard our fate.  Or that if we bow before death’s sovereignty, Thanatos might take pity and spare us.  But a poem like Kirun’s is striving to be clear-eyed about the beautiful/brutal nature of our mortality, while still leaning on that primordial pronouncement: it is good.  Praise be.

 

 

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/