Red Letter Poem #310

  

 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 #310

 

 

 

 

Deer Skull (with Small, Deformed Antler)

 

 

“The skulls…were beautiful as anything I know…

strangely more living than the animals walking around…”

 

       —Georgia O’Keeffe, in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz

 

He must have staggered into the clearing

in the grove of Shumard oaks, and fallen

there, in sight of Stanley Draper Lake

just east of the Cross Timbers—which is where

I found him. Or rather, I found one antler

protruding from the red-brown bed of oak

leaves—four upright, branching tines, off-white

against the leaf litter: late fall in central Oklahoma.



The afternoon was clear and dry: good hunting

weather, but there were no hunters this late

in the season, who knows why. I lifted the antler

and the whole skull came up in my hands,

clean of flesh and skin—he must have been dead

for weeks—the skull surprisingly heavy, though

missing the lower jaw. Then I noticed the other

antler—downturned, two-tined, and half the length



of the first. What caused this strange asymmetry?

I glanced around: in the oak-leaf scrum

were scattered bones, equally clean of flesh

—the rest of him? There wasn’t time to linger,

the friend with whom I had hiked here

needed to get home, and I would be leaving the state

soon. I hefted the skull to the car, and

would carry it without breakage from one move



to the next. I didn’t yet know the term

“drop-tine buck”—the bigger the dropped tine

the more prized by hunters. Would anyone have wanted

this stunted antler for a trophy? But I was the one

who found him, claimed him; and the disease

or hunter whose gunshot may have killed him

might be out there still—a message I could carry

in my own thinning human bones.

 

 

                                                ––Carolyne Wright

 

 

 

 

 

“Imperfections are not inadequacies;”––writes Brené Brown, educator, researcher, best-selling author––“they are reminders that we're all in this together.” And together, in the thick of it––where most living creatures spend the bulk of their days––is precisely where Carolyne Wright’s poetry situates her readers. She has learned from her mentors––poets like Richard Hugo, Elizabeth Bishop, W.D. Snodgrass, and William Stafford––the entrancing power of specificity, the ‘telling’ details that substantiate a moment in a reader’s imagination. But she’s mastered as well the discipline required to trust the poetic impulse, to give it free rein once it’s begun breaking into consciousness. Easier said than done, I might add. It requires that the more familiar internal voice––the one that usually narrates our days––step back from that role, becoming almost an observer to what’s unfolding intuitively. While lines begin galloping across the page, the poet must be willing to follow wherever the pen leads, no matter how wild the ride or how unanticipated the destination. In today’s new piece––titled like a specimen placard in a natural history museum––Carolyne is remembering a find she made when hiking with a friend in Oklahoma. Far from her Pacific Northwest stomping grounds, she came across a deer skull “protruding from the red-brown bed of oak / leaves—four upright, branching tines, off-white/ against the leaf litter…”. How quickly we come to trust the observational skills and emotional intelligence of the speaker––and that’s important because, coupled with that credibility, comes an increased vulnerability on our part: go ahead, keep searching––our minds reply to such forceful language––we’ll follow.



But quickly the scene shifts, and the speaker has returned home, where the skull will become one of her prized possessions. That much of the narrative is quite factual––I’ve seen the photos showing the rather dramatic remains of this proud creature on display. But that is, to my mind, the most superficial part of this inky journey. All the subtle, oh-so-casually offered asides in this poem begin to lead us into a kind of shadow-world, the sort of esoteric terrain that was once the province of mystics and shamans. That O’Keeffe epigraph functions something like a spirit-guide––as if our imagined connection to the natural world exceeds even our glimpses of the actual. “(I)n the oak-leaf scrum/ were scattered bones, equally clean of flesh––/the rest of him?” Perhaps, reading those words, you too felt a sudden welling dread, an intimation of our mortal fragility? It’s devastating to imagine how quickly the full and vibrant experience of a life––human or otherwise––can be stripped of its identity, simply lost to time. And what would usher in such a transformation? Sometimes we fall prey to “hunters” (and you don’t need me to remind you of the varied nature of violence plaguing our days). But other times, it’s merely some biologic circumstance or viral misfortune that stops us in our tracks, far from what we imagined to be our final season. I felt myself mourning for this creature and, through him, for all whom I hold dear.



Carolyne’s resume displays the passionate engagement of this writer’s life: poet, translator, editor, educator, she’s published ten poetry collections as well as five volumes of translation from Chilean, Brazilian Portuguese, and West Bengali and Bangladeshi women poets. Her work has garnered awards from organizations like the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the New England Poetry Club, and the American Book Award––as well as fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the New York State Arts Council, and the Fulbright and Witter Bynner Foundations, among others. She’s taught in universities and writing programs across the United States and abroad, and currently is on the faculty for the Richard Hugo House in Seattle. There is an interesting push-pull dynamic at play in today’s feature: a poem about asymmetry, written in neat 8-line stanzas––the tension of form and content. And the ‘imperfection’ of the antlers at the center Carolyne’s meditation marked this deer as a unique individual. Sad to say, the fascination with––and often fear of––difference, that generated so powerful a response in primitive man, still plays a role in our oh-so-modern experience. Something “out there” may herald our own destruction if we cannot learn to cope with all the idiosyncrasies that make us both unique and simply another member of the herd. “My imperfections and failures,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi, “are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at His feet.” That’s part of the message this poet has extracted from this holy relic––a prayer we might inscribe on our “own thinning bones.”

 

 

 

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/

Ibbetson Street Comes to Revere-- Aug 21st

 

Flashback Friday: Red Letter Poem #78

 

 

 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

 

 

 

 

WE, (too) the people

 

Wearing my other hat as NEPC president, I am preparing for the final 2 WE (too)… events of the summer­­––August 2^nd: Major Jackson and Kirun Kapur (with music by the inimitable Stan Stickland); and August 9^th where Pulitzer Prize-winner Marie Howe will read and accept our Golden Rose Prize for lifetime achievement (with music from violinist Elizabeth Burke).  The readings are created in partnership with the Longfellow Historical House (105 Brattle Street; Cambridge, MA) and are staged on their lawn (rain location, next door at the Lincoln Institute).  They are free and open to the public.  In addition to celebrating America’s 250^th, this series of 8 readings demonstrates that a diversity of voices and visions is essential to the vitality of our culture.  We’re not leaving our distant readers out; video recordings will become available on our website a few days after each event.

 

For information about the WE (too)… project:

https://nepoetryclub.org/we-too-the-people/

For our YouTube video channel:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRDs5gK-I0rtOiL_Vh2YjyEoodKaZergx

 

And so let me offer you a Flashback Friday, going all the way back to the second year of the Red Letter project, featuring a poem from Martha Collins’ groundbreaking trilogy about race in America.  Martha, too, was a Golden Rose winner––and when she read for us in 2025, she expressed a wish that her poems from books like White Papers would have become obsolete.  Sadly, they are more relevant than ever.

 

 

 Flashback Friday:

Red Letter Poem #78

 

 

 

 

 

White Papers #1

 

 

 

Because my father said Yes

but not in our lifetimes Because

my mother said I know my daughter

would never want to marry...

 

But mostly because they rarely spoke

of or noticed or even whispered

about and did not of course ...

 

Because magazines rarely TV

rarely textbooks rarely or not

at all except for figures like

George Washington Carver

who'd lived in our state

 

Because among the crayons

there was one called Flesh

 

Because paintings rarely or never

until because books from the library

never until because college literature

not at all the American lit anthology

had only Gwendolyn Brooks

who was not assigned

 

Because a few years after Brown

v. Board of Education I wrote a paper

that took the position Yes but not yet

 

 

                         –– Martha Collins

 

 

 

 

In his essay "A Defence of Poetry", Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".  Award-winning author Martha Collins might just be the sort of poet he had in mind.  Shelley was not advocating that poets ought to control the levers of government––but he hoped the clarity of their thought, the power of their moral suasion might provide the sort of wise leadership a people could rely upon.  Many writers have become self-appointed ministers-without-portfolio, taking on the vital social and political issues of their time, and Martha is a perfect example.  After discovering that her father had witnessed a racial lynching as a young boy in Cairo, Illinois, she “became obsessed with thinking about what that experience might have meant to him.”  Like a one-person legislative committee, she began a far-ranging investigation of the ways our concepts about race are embedded, often invisibly, in our individual and collective imaginations.  It was clear to her that no political solution could effect any real change unless these ideas and images were untangled first.  

 

The result was, not one, but three complete poetry collections published across a decade: the first, Blue Front, was issued by Graywolf Press; the next two, White Papers (where today’s Red Letter selection first appeared) and Admit One, under the imprint of the University of Pittsburgh Press.   Employing original source material from her extensive research, her poems interweave the fragmentary strands of consciousness––the sort that might be spoken in public, as well as the private monologues we might never dare give voice to, not even within the walls of our own homes.  Hers are more potent than any congressional ‘white paper’ in that they are documents of psychic intimacy in whose presence we too may come clean to ourselves about what we actually feel.

 

Martha Collins is something of a unique literary talent.  Poet, translator, educator, citizen-historian, she’s been lauded for her book-length examinations of social and political forces, and the ways they are manifest in the lives of ordinary Americans (though the poet uncovers extraordinary circumstance at every turn).  In 2022, she published her eleventh volume of poetry, Casualty Reports (Pitt Poetry Series).  The following year, her fifth volume of translations from the Vietnamese was released; Dreaming the Mountain (in collaboration with Nguyen Ba Chung) carries over into English work from across a forty-year period by the Buddhist poet and scholar Tuệ Sỹ.   And just this year, a collection of prose works appeared: Word Work: Essays, Reviews, Reflections (Tiger Bark Press).  Among Martha’s trove of honors are fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, and the Witter Bynner Foundation––as well as three Pushcart Prizes, the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.  Because she is quiet and self-effacing, I suspect Martha might bristle at my use of the Shelley quotation.  So I’ll say that she’s, if not legislator, then certainly educator-at-large––because this poet has assigned herself this intensive exploration in order to come to grips with the emotional material she herself was carrying.  Martha’s work makes the facts of our American condition manifest and inescapable.  But like any good teacher, she knows these tools might then become of use to all the rest of us who’ve come to understand––especially in the age of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor––how much we’ve yet to learn.

 

 

 

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/