Poet Sarah Hannah Has Passed.

http://www.writersartists.net/shannah.htm



Poet Sarah Hannah Has Passed.

Poet Sarah Hannah, Emerson College instructor and author of “Longing Distance” has passed away. Hannah reportedly committed suicide.

A Newton, Mass. native, she held a PhD. From Columbia University. I had the pleasure to know her, interview her, book her for readings, and publish her in issue 20 of the Ibbetson Street Press. She was a striking woman, wore a nose ring, played the bass in a rock band, and had a brilliant poetic talent.

Ironically she sent me an article she wrote on the poetry of Sylvia Plath; who met the same fate. She said her next book of poetry was to deal with the mental illness of her mother. Tupelo Press is publishing the collection, and it was due out in the next several months. I had booked her for The Somerville News Writers Festival, and she asked me to help book her for a reading at McLean Hospital, which I was close to doing. I sent her an email last week. I was told that she killed herself last week. She was only in her early 40’s. I know her high school teacher. She seemed so happy. Her star was rising. She had been through a divorce. She had everything to live for. I have only clichés. I am sorry. I have worked at McLean Hospital for 25 years, but I am not immune to this. May she rest in peace.

The family is having a private memorial. There will be a public memorial at Emerson College in the fall.

I conducted this interview with Sarah a year ago:
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Interview with poet Sarah Hannah: A Poet within “Longing Distance”

Sarah Hannah is an educator, a poet with a PhD from Columbia University, and a sometimes rock musician. Her poems have appeared in “Barrow Street,” “Parnassus,” “Gulf Coast,” “Crab Orchard Review,” and others. Her original manuscript, which became her first poetry collection “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for the “Yale Younger Poets Prize,” in 2002. Anne Dillard describes her collection as: “…an extremely moving work. I’m struck by her intelligence of emotion and her unmistakable voice…Sarah Hannah is a true original.” She currently resides with her husband in Cambridge and teaches at Emerson College in Boston. She was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.

”Doug Holder: Can you tell us about the “Yale Younger Poets Prize” which “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for?

Sarah Hannah: That was a sort of near miss. That was in 2002. That was the year Tupelo Press accepted my book. I found out I was a runner up by phoning the editor, (not the judge) who was W.S. Merwin. The editor told me he remembered the book, and it was a semi-finalist, and it was a strong book.

Doug Holder: A lot of folks claim a PhD can ruin a poet. You learn how to write academic papers, but you forget how to write poetry. This does not seem to be the case with you.

Sarah Hannah: It ruined me in the sense that while I was writing my dissertation, I felt that I didn’t have time to write poetry. But I think the PhD made me a better poet. It forced me to really study poetry deeply. You have to grapple with ideas that are foreign to you. You read more than just contemporary poets. You learn to become a better writer.Some people become sidetracked. They go into a PhD program and they emerge as critics not poets. There are more people around than you think that are poets and scholars.

Doug Holder: How did you come up with the title for your collection “Longing Distance?”

Sarah Hannah: I was writing a series of sonnets about a messed up love affair. You know “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” an all those clichés. So I came up with a line while I was in the country watching my husband scale a rock. I thought of the line: “I keep you at longing distance.” I thought it was just going to be another sonnet in the sequence. I wrote the sonnet, but then wound up expunging it from the book. I kept “Longing Distance,’ as the title.

Doug Holder: From our email exchanges I get the impression you haven’t had an easy life.

Sarah Hannah: I lived a hardscrabble life. I’ve seen life disintegrate. I wanted to put back my experiences in more metaphysical or formal terms.I grew up in Newton, Mass., in the Waban section. A lot of neurosis going on there. I would say seven out of my eight high school friends were bulimic. I was not. My mother was hospitalized at the same “summer hotel” Anne Sexton visited.

Doug Holder: How does your teaching at Emerson College fit with your poetry?

Sarah Hannah: It’s fitting beautifully because I am teaching poetry, as opposed to composition. I am teaching traditional form to graduate and undergraduate students. I teach a hybrid literature and writing course.

Doug Holder: Why did you move from the bright lights and big city of New York to the more provincial environs of Boston?

Sarah Hannah: I am a lover of the underdog. Boston is the underdog to New York. I felt I had to come back. You know: “My end is my beginning, my beginning my end.” I have always missed Boston. I am a loyal person that way. My husband and I purchased a house in Cambridge. It’s right in the Central Square area. It’s a very diverse city. I often write at the ‘1369” Coffee Shop or ‘Grendel’s Den,” in Harvard Square. I feel rooted here.

Doug Holder: How does the lit scene here compare to the “Big Apple?”

Sarah Hannah: There are a lot of readings here like N.Y. I lived in N.Y. for 17 years. It took me 8 years to get “out” there. It seems much faster out here. I have a book though, that makes a difference. I was worried. It took a long time for me to establish myself in New York City. But I didn’t loose my contacts because I maintained my connection to the journal “Barrow Street,” and now I am an editor there.”

Interview with Poet Sarah Getty: A Poet who mixes the concrete, with metaphors and emotions….

Sarah Getty is a poet who believes that concrete imagery, as well as being in touch with one’s emotions, are necessary to write poetry. And indeed, Getty’s poetry is full of both, and her work has a descriptive and evocative abundance. Getty is an award-winning poet and fiction writer living near Boston. Her most recent collection of poems is: “Bring Me Her Heart,” (Higganum Hill Books, 2006) Getty is the recipient of a “Cambridge Poetry Prize,” and won the “Barbara Bradley Prize,” from the New England Poetry Club. Her wok has been in such journals as: “The Paris Review,” “The Massachusetts Review,’ ‘The Larcom Review,” and many others. I talked with Getty on my Somerville Community Access TV Show: “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: In a review of your new poetry collection “Bring Me Her Heart,” the reviewer writes that your work indicates to the reader and other writers that they ought to learn more. Why do you think your work is so informed?

Sarah Getty: I have a PhD in English so I have a rather broad range of knowledge.

Doug Holder: Is it arcane knowledge?

Sarah Getty: No. I wouldn’t say it’s arcane. I use some of the best known Greek myths in my work. I have always been a big reader and I have a good memory.

Doug Holder: But don’t you think most poets have a broad range of knowledge?

Sarah Getty: Well… It’s partly because of my age of course…. I mean I have a lot more time as a writer. When I was in school there was probably more attention paid to traditional literature. I think this is now lacking in public education. Education today seems more concerned with boosting the student’s self-esteem.

Doug Holder: You have a new book out: “Bring Her My Heart,” by Higganum Hill Press. Richard Debold, the publisher told me his editorial board shies away from work that is “self-referential.” How would you define your work?

Sarah Getty: Some of it is self-reerential. I think he means “just,” writing about yourself. My poetry deals with issues like death, by putting it in the context of Greek myth, etc…My editor wants work that refers to more than the poet himself.

Doug Holder: But isn’t the poet’s experience part of the common bond of humanity.

Sarah Getty: Indeed this is true. You can write things that are universal without referring to Greek myth. The more specific you can be, the more universal you will be.

Doug Holder: In your poem: “Leonardo’s The Coition of a Hemisected Man and Woman,” you brilliantly dissect a DaVinci sketch of the anatomies of a man and woman. You write that DaVinci started the search for the “essence,’ of man…” but we hapless humans still…hop about hapless and hopeful/ as the half Chick, creating fictitious forms, to fulfill speculative functions. Explain.

Sarah Getty: (Laughs) That was quoted from a scholar’s writing about DaVinci. Although we credit DaVinci with being one of the first people to dissect cadavers, he made a lot of mistakes. He created fictitious forms of speculative function. I meant we blunder around in our lives just as people did 500 years ago. In matters of the heart we are still speculative,

Doug Holder: In the poem “Late Day,” in your new collection, you recreate a scene that uses a rural pond as a backdrop for a reflection on death, or perhaps our ultimate divorce from nature. You write:

“When three Mallards glide by, green heads
gleaming. When sound sleeps. When,

for an hour, there is nothing to wish for.
When the air cools and the water

darkens. When gray geese raise a ruckus,
saying you cannot stay.”

Do you think we are drawn to images like the sea, the sunset, because they are in effect dramas about the cycle of life and death?

Sarah Getty: They are natural symbols. Yes. You sit in lake, during a golden afternoon…everything is beautiful…everything is perfect. But these geese are making a noise that implies: “you cannot stay.” On the first level it means: “I have to go home and make dinner.” But on the other it signals mortality. There is a lot of thought about our mortality in the book.

Doug Holder: You run workshops for poets. How do you approach the novice?

Sarah Getty: I basically have a two-sided approach. One is to concentrate on concrete images in the poem. Concrete images are important. I also encourage them to expand their vocabulary. I have them use the dictionary, and use words that they don’t know.

Doug Holder: Why is it important to expand their vocabulary?

Sarah Getty: It’s like you have a small wardrobe and you want to expand. The other approach I use in my workshops is for the poets to get in touch with their emotions. I make them imagine something they encounter, the ghost of their mother, etc… Something evocative.

Doug Holder: You are a singer. How does that fit with your life as a poet?

Sarah Getty: I am a member of the “Master Singers,” that perform in Lexington, Mass. for the past 30 years. I do think there is a connection between poetry and song. Poetry is about sound and rhythm.

Doug Holder: How hard is it to get a poetry book published?

Sarah Getty: It is very hard. It helps to be in the area for a long time. I have and I built up a large personal network. Both of my books were published by people I know. You have to get a practical approach or you are going to put your poems in a drawer like Emily Dickinson.

--Doug Holder. For more info. On Sarah Getty go to http://www.sarahgetty.net/

SARAH HANNAH (1967-2007) – A LONGING DISTANCE by Lo Galluccio

SARAH HANNAH (1967-2007) – A LONGING DISTANCE
By Lo Galluccio

Yes, right now there is a longing distance between myself and this brilliant dead poet – Sarah Hannah -- for whom I will read and honor the upcoming Writer’s Festival in Somerville this November 11th. That is her book, her first published poetry book – Longing Distance -- which Doug Holder sent me to review months ago. It is a beautifully cosmically colored lush pink book, a semi-finalist for the Yale Younger Poet’s Prize and one which I was, frankly, afraid to review. How strange looking back on it now. Why was I afraid to review this particular book after reviewing so many other works of PhDs and accomplished academic poets for Ibbetson St. Press?

What a mistake I made not to review her work then. How much I might have learned and gained in inspiration. On the subject of pink, that girl color, that deep vortex of cosmos color with stars embedded on the cover, she writes in the poem:

“The Colors are Off This Season”

I don’t want any more of this mumble—
Orange fireside hues,
Fading sun, autumnal tumble,
Stricken, inimitable – Rose.

I want Pink, unthinking, true.
Foam pink, cream and coddle,
Miniskirt, Lolita, pompom, tutu,
Milkshake.”
P 14,

Yes, there I see my namesake, Lolita, and there I see that wonderful cascading Hopkinesque and Plath-like brocade of images, the colors come alive with emotion, motion and vibrant association. That’s a poet. She wants something that’s not there, something of her own invention. She’s a girl imposing her vision on the landscape. It’s her whim and this rather painful, playful division between what’s there and what she wants to be there. Funny, because that’s why I’m Lo. I’m Lo because I took the name when my first solo CD, Being Visited, came out on the Knitting Factory label in New York. I had secretly wanted to be a sexy tough singer maybe with heart-shaped sunglasses through which to view the world. I had been called that by first boyfriend at Harvard College. I wanted to be something other than my former self. I wanted that after my father died and when I became a poet and singer in New York. Different from Sarah, who was systematically called and systematically brilliant in her studies. Sarah, I think, always had her head on straight, more or less. Wesleyan College, A student, Columbia University PhD in Poetry and then Emerson College Professor of Literature and Writing. According to the Boston Globe story, she also wrote on ‘sheaves of pink paper.”

I met and read alongside her at a reading at McIntyre and Moore bookstore later that year – what season now I can’t remember-- and I was struck by how fine boned and how forthright she was. Again, we did not have much contact but I was very impressed by her. I failed to comprehend again that though this brilliant blonde from Newton, MA was more of an academic poet than myself, we had both traversed similar orbits and held similar passions: New York City, rock music/music in general, and strangely some, well carry-over NYC hip ness and scars. Here was actually someone who, like me, had been favored with intelligence and creativity and drive, but who had also seen it all fall apart. And then, from there, I have to get to the fact that I’m here, after three suicide attempts and brave Sarah, in one swift stroke, is gone. In May of 2007, after moving to Brookline, following a recent divorce from her husband, she committed suicide at 40.

In the SCAT TV interview with Doug Holder, she says that Longing Distance was named after watching her husband scale some rocks and that it came from the idea of messed up love affairs and “absence making the heart grow fonder.” So there is the idea of the unreachable or unattainable love in the very title of the book. Despite her upbeat and nourishing and sometimes humorous aura, Sarah, like Plath, knew tragedy was near. This book is a masterpiece of word play and an amazing amalgam of a kind of urban princess who could also peer into the high-blown intricacies of nature:

“A storm swathes the Atlantic coast:
Heavey Snow, Blowing Snow; Ceiling Low; Dewpoint Twenty.
The Capes, those lonely outposts,
Are summoned like deities: May, Cod, Hatteras,
Waters green and roiling….”


Colette Inez, one of several rave reviewers, commented:
“Astronomy, Renaissance literature, mythology, music, a love of wit and verbal play combined with a passion for form and scholarship resonate in this lively collection of poems that marks Sarah Hannah’s exciting debut…”

Sarah had a full-blooded teaching career at Emerson College, where she was adored by her writing students and played guitar in a rock bands, an avocation and passion she’s begun in New York City where she’d spent 17 years paying dues to develop an original poetic voice in this country. She returned to Boston, which was her home, because she wanted to be in the “underdog” City as she put it.

Her second work is forthcoming on Tupelo Press and it deals with her mother’s mental illness. She finished it before she died, “Inflorescence” and this work shows that Sarah had a passion for people as well as for metaphysical language; that she was also wrestling with a depression in the family, maybe in her mother only or also in herself. The cover features a gorgeous gold burst of flower enveloping both of them. Readings from it by poets and friends will take place at the Poet’s House at 72 Spring St. in New York City on October 25th from 7-9 pm. I go there on a mission to learn more about Sarah, to hear more of her work and to revisit the City which made me an artist, the City I still like to think of as the badlands, as Oz, as home. Really, it is another chance to pay homage to Sarah before I read in November from her work.

Oh that Sarah and I had had a chance to talk over a green tea latte at 1369 in late April. Oh that I might have told her that my break up with a world-famous guitarist nearly killed me, and so did the psych ward aftermath of my own suicide attempt. Maybe she would have realized something still very good about her own situation. Because the problem with poets is that they get very dark and have a tendency to think they can figure it all out themselves, or have to. Without someone shining a fine light or turning the right key in their minds they can miss the fact that against all that agony, they still have important cards to play. That’s the real tragedy of the suicide of an artist. However, Sarah’s work lives on and so does her memory. May she spin on in another dimension….

Lo Galluccio
Ibbetson St. Press
Author of “Hot Rain” and numerous publications
www.logalluccio.com
For more information on Sarah Hannah Google her or visit Tupelo Press’s site

Interview with poet Sarah Hannah: A Poet within “Longing Distance”

Sarah Hannah is an educator, a poet with a PhD from Columbia University, and a sometimes rock musician. Her poems have appeared in “Barrow Street,” “Parnassus,” “Gulf Coast,” “Crab Orchard Review,” and others. Her original manuscript which became her first poetry collection “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for the “Yale Younger Poets Prize,” in 2002. Anne Dillard describes her collection as: “…an extremely moving work. I’m struck by her intelligence of emotion and her unmistakable voice…Sarah Hannah is a true original.” She currently resides with her husband in Cambridge and teaches at Emerson College in Boston. She was a guest on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer.”

Doug Holder: Can you tell us about the “Yale Younger Poets Prize” which “Longing Distance,” was a semi-finalist for?

Sarah Hannah: That was a sort of near miss. That was in 2002. That was the year Tupelo Press accepted my book. I found out I was a runner up by phoning the editor, (not the judge) who was W.S. Merwin. The editor told me he remembered the book, and it was a semi-finalist, and it was a strong book.

Doug Holder: A lot of folks claim a PhD can ruin a poet. You learn how to write academic papers, but you forget how to write poetry. This does not seem to be the case with you.

Sarah Hannah: It ruined me in the sense that while I was writing my dissertation, I felt that I didn’t have time to write poetry. But I think the PhD made me a better poet. It forced me to really study poetry deeply. You have to grapple with ideas that are foreign to you. You read more than just contemporary poets. You learn to become a better writer.

Some people become sidetracked. They go into a PhD program and they emerge as critics not poets. There are more people around than you think that are poets and scholars.

Doug Holder: How did you come up with the title for your collection “Longing Distance?”

Sarah Hannah: I was writing a series of sonnets about a messed up love affair. You know “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” an all those clichés. So I came up with a line while I was in the country watching my husband scale a rock. I thought of the line: “I keep you at longing distance.” I thought it was just going to be another sonnet in the sequence. I wrote the sonnet, but then wound up expunging it from the book. I kept “Longing Distance,’ as the title.

Doug Holder: From our email exchanges I get the impression you haven’t had an easy life.

Sarah Hannah: I lived a hardscrabble life. I’ve seen life disintegrate . I wanted to put back my experiences in more metaphysical or formal terms.

I grew up in Newton, Mass., in the Waban section. A lot of neurosis going on there. I would say seven out of my eight high school friends were bulimic. I was not. My mother was hospitalized at the same “summer hotel” Anne Sexton visited.

Doug Holder: How does your teaching at Emerson College fit with your poetry?

Sarah Hannah: It’s fitting beautifully because I am teaching poetry, as opposed to composition. I am teaching traditional form to graduate and undergraduate students. I teach a hybrid literature and writing course.

Doug Holder: Why did you move from the bright lights and big city of New York to the more provincial environs of Boston?

Sarah Hannah: I am a lover of the underdog. Boston is the underdog to New York. I felt I had to come back. You know: “My end is my beginning, my beginning my end.” I have always missed Boston. I am a loyal person that way. My husband and I purchased a house in Cambridge. It’s right in the Central Square area. It’s a very diverse city. I often write at the ‘1369” Coffee Shop or ‘Grendel’s Den,” in Harvard Square. I feel rooted here.

Doug Holder: How does the lit scene here compare to the “Big Apple?”

Sarah Hannah: There are a lot of readings here like N.Y. I lived in N.Y. for 17 years. It took me 8 years to get “out” there. It seems much faster out here. I have a book though, that makes a difference. I was worried. It took a long time for me to establish myself in New York City. But I didn’t loose my contacts because I maintained my connection to the journal “Barrow Street,” and now I am an editor there.”


Eclipse

Every so often I am dilated; the pupilsSwallow everything—a catchall soup,Two cauldrons, stubborn in the bald glare
Of bathroom light. They are hunting sleep—The sea grass, the blue cot rocking;In sleep I am a Spanish dancer,
Awaiting my cue at the velvet curtain,Now and then groping for the sash,Or on horseback, abducted, thumping
Through pampas. I sleep too much;I curl in at midday, sheepish,In strange rooms. Clouds are hurrying by—
The walls, a wash of white; still my eyesAre mazing through their dark gardens,The great lamp shut, the crescents duplicating.
It is only a temporary state of affairs.The sun boils behind the moon.

Sarah Hannah will be reading at the Newton Free Library Poetry Series March 14 7PM. 330 Homer St. Newton Centre, Mass.

FOR SARAH ( a poem in memory of Sarah Hannah)

Sarah Hannah

I got this poem from Ibbetson Street poet Ruth Sabath Rosenthal. Ruth was a student of Sarah's when she lived in

New York City, and they kept in touch when Sarah moved back to the Boston- area.


FOR SARAH.

My friend, mine is a beating heart,
a poem bursting to come forth;
yours has stopped. No dormancy
of writer's block. Stopped for good.

O, that yours would still beat out poems.
No matter how dark, we'd listen,
we'd learn, we'd understand & maybe
you'd be here now. Perhaps

a Sonnet with its turn moving to depths
of utter bleakness, assonance resounding
in the second stanza. No resolution fit
for dreamy eyes to rest upon.

Blank verse, rhyme-riddled with
syllabic runs, each iambic line
symbolic unto itself, each stanza break,
a whip crack, a heart breaking.

A Villanelle, whose repeating end-
rhymed lines bleed their way down
to a finale punctuated by a question
mark & dead silence.

A Sestina of razor-sharp repitition
echoing the i in cry. A lament that pierces
through stanza upon stanza, until
reaching biblical heights of irony.

O. that we'd hear more from you. No
matter how dark the sound, we'd listen,
we'd learn, we'd understand & maybe
you'd be here now.

Ruth Sabath Rosenthal -

Sarah Kramer: The Artisan's Asylum's Dinosaur Lady.

                               

SARAH KRAMER

           
 
                                                                   By Doug Holder



I met crafter Sarah Kramer at the Artisan's Asylum right outside Union Square in Somerville. This is where Kramer works amidst all the high tech gadgetry, and cutting-edge art the other members are involved with. She talked with me about her craft-- creating what she calls semi-saurs which in a nutshell is taking small plastic dinosaur figurines, cutting them in half, add a magnet, and let the consumer mix and match body parts of many types of dinosaurs. She also makes gift magnets, with intriguing images under glass. She places them in gift boxes with colorful Japanese Washi paper.

Kramer lived in Somerville for three years. She now lives in Somerville with her husband. Kramer laughed and said, " I made a big sacrifice moving to Somerville--giving up a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City for love."

Kramer has quite the eclectic background. She studied theatre at New York University, as well as the Lee Strasberg's "Actors Studio". She has worked on the technical side of theatre.  She had a stint  on  the play "Heidwig and the Angry Inch," as well as working on the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

The she found another calling. That was-- tutoring students for the Law School Admission Standardized Test. She told me, " I love to use logic in my teaching. This was a great fit for me. I helped students prepare for the test, and even more importantly I helped with deciding if the law was the right fit for them."

Unfortunately, the black dogs of depression found her, and she was unable to teach this demanding material. She went through a number of clinical trials. She was in a major study at Mass. General Hospital about the use of the drug Ketamene. With Ketamine her depression lifted, but there was still cognitive impairment from the many treatments of  ECT, and the other drugs she has taken over the years.

Kramer told me that she buys mini plastic dinosaurs on Amazon.She uses a drill press to secure a space for the magnets inside of the inanimate creatures. They have been quite popular, according to Kramer, and  she is starting to make a small profit.
.
Kramer hopes to get back to teaching, but for now her little creatures, magnets occupy her time, and keeps her creative juices flowing here--in the-Paris of New England.

For more information about Kramer and her work:  go to  https://www.somervillemedia.org/som-arts-semi-saurs-with-sarah-kramer/

Red Letter Poem #191

 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 #191

 

 

 

 

 

Practicing the 12-Bar Blues

 

to my father

 

 

Raised black and flat whites.

 

Left hand arpeggio, pinky to root;

third and fifth pressed with middle and ring;

 

thumb at six, counterpoint

on the right for improvised melodic licks—

 

yes, it’s all coming back.

 

Minor verse, major chorus, the honkytonk

rhythms shuffle, toe-tappable riffs,

 

deep as fingerbones

know, beyond knowing—

 

separation takes practice.             

 

Loose knuckles stretch the octave.

Tension.  Release.

 

How do hands hold such memory?

 

The groove returns: backbeat pocket,

my piano hands two planets orbiting

 

free of each other.  I remember

how I unlearned unison,

 

how it’s not all that hard,

and I’m sorry forgetting you feels this good.

 

 

                         ––Sarah Anne Stinnett

 

 

 

I don’t believe her––the voice of the protagonist in Sarah Anne Stinnett’s new poem.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she’s lying or inauthentic (far from it); nor is she an example of the fiction writer’s tool, the unreliable narrator, whose perspective is intentionally skewed.  No, Sarah Anne’s poem comes across as matter-of-fact, carefully observed, and quietly confessional––as if there’s little space between the speaker and the poet bringing her to the page.  But there is a gap and––in the act of reaching out in the dark, for self-knowledge, for control over grief’s always-threatening tidal wave––that’s where the emotional crescendo of the poem is most keenly experienced.  So let’s (as bandleaders like to say) take it from the top.

 

I’ll start with the dedication–– to my father, not the more customary for.  And so we are clued in that this may be what’s called a ‘poem of address’, language supposedly offered to one particular pair of eyes and ears.  It’s as if we readers were (continuing the metaphor) overhearing this music drifting up from a downstairs neighbor.  Quickly, we come to trust the authority of this speaker; she’s certainly put in the time seated at that piano.  And as she reacquaints herself with the instrument, we almost feel our hands atop hers, picking out the riff: “thumb at six, counterpoint/ on the right for improvised melodic licks––// yes, it’s all coming back.”  Listen to that succession of short i vowels cushioning the intervals between the hammering of percussive k-sound consonants.  How can we help but begin imagining the jangly blues she’s practicing?  Slowly, we too come to “know, beyond knowing” that loss must be learned over time like a new and heartbreaking song––that indeed “separation takes practice.”  And as the two hands across the keyboard learn to move independently, the speaker must develop that same life-skill if the love she’s carrying inside is to sustain rather than undermine her performance.  You won’t be surprised to learn that, before his passing, Sarah Anne’s father was a jazz musician and musicologist who taught at the famed Berklee College of Music for over three decades (where the poet herself studied the electric bass.)  “The language of music,” she told me, “was a prominent part of my upbringing and something that binds my family together.”  Though the poem has not confided such detail to us, don’t you imagine her father as her mentor and collaborator––the music of their duets now enduring within this solo performance?

 

Sarah Anne, I must say, is quite accomplished for someone so young.  Taking a multidisciplinary approach, she completed her undergraduate work in the humanities and recently received two Masters degrees: one in Dramatic Arts (from Harvard Extension), and her MFA in poetry from Lesley University.  Presently she teaches a variety of classes in business communications, theater, and poetry through Berklee; and she’s developed a course on “the oral interpretation of literary works” at Lesley, among other educational projects.  Because she was one of the winners of the Cambridge Sidewalk Poetry Contest, one of her poems is incised in concrete at the crossing of Walden and Raymond Streets.  She is currently working to complete her first collection of poetry, and today’s piece is among an extensive group of elegies to her father.  I lost my own father when I was a child––and while, of course, we all bring our personal history to bear when delving into a poem, being part of this wounded brother/sisterhood raises the bar when reading about loss.  I was moved by this poem’s quiet awareness of how the world is both continuous, unchanged––and, at the same time, dramatically reshaped by the death of a parent.  In the closing lines––and with something of an apology to her father for a life that goes on without him––the speaker celebrates the balm of forgetting.  True––but at the very same moment, and a hairsbreadth above her, the poet is engraving remembrance in the lyric of this poem.  In this contradiction, I hear grief’s refrain cycling around––the blues of a conscious mind.  And that I believe utterly.

 

 

 

 

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 Twitter          

@StevenRatiner