Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Dear friends,

We are following up on the recent announcement of a Manship Charles Coe Poet-in-Residence.

Today, in partnership with Manship Artists Residency, we are launching a GoFundMe campaign–May 12 to June 16–and asking for your help in establishing this program in memoriam. We have also shared the GoFundMe on Charles’ Facebook page.
(Links are at the bottom of the email.)

This Charles Coe Poet Residency is being created by Manship Artists on Cape Ann, where he loved spending time as an artist-in-residence. The residency will honor the life and legacy of Charles Coe (1952-2025) as a beloved and extraordinary poet, teacher, mentor, activist, musician, cultural worker, and cherished friend.

We invite you to visit the GoFundMe campaign page and hope you will consider making a donation to help create this lasting tribute to Charles. You can find out more about this named, memorial program on his dedicated Manship website page.

We are also writing to ask if you would help spread the word via email, social media, or word-of-mouth. To make participation easy, we have created a campaign Outreach Kit with templates, photos and video clips, and excerpts of Charles’ poetry. You can also personalize your message with your own memories, which are meaningful when inviting others to contribute.

We would so appreciate if you would share the GoFundMe announcement or campaign messages in one of these ways:

From Charles’ Facebook timeline–Like, Comment, or Repost campaign messages to your FB page (we will be posting weekly along with Manship)

Create your own Facebook message using an Outreach Kit sample post and share on your FB timeline

Share an email with your friends and contacts, including in poetry, writing, musical, or activist circles. Feel free to use a sample email from the Outreach Kit

Thanks so much for your help with this effort. The group on this email represents Charles’ community and it feels good to be pulling together to create a successful campaign.

Our goal is to raise $50,000 to help establish the Charles Coe Poet-in-Residence program, for which Manship Artists Residencies’ Prometheus Circle has committed a $10,000 matching gift. Manship will conduct additional institutional fundraising, so this poet residency will carry Charles’ name in perpetuity.

Links:
Fundraiser by Manship Artists Residency : Help Honor Charles Coe’s Legacy through a Poetry Residency
Charles Coe Poet Residency - Manship Artists Residency
GFM Outreach Kit—Manship Charles Coe Residency - Google Drive

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 #299

Fly

Between blinds and the windowpane,

a housefly natters.

Frost patterns the glass.

The fly’s been trapped beside the frame

for two days, complaining. Starving?

The day warms; ice drips away.

How much time before a black knot

swivels on the sill, legs in the air,

for me to vacuum––how long

in fly years? Watching ants

crawl through stems of grass

lofty, to them, as trees,

I thought, as a child, that hours

pass for them more slowly––

I’d jumbled space with time.

Now I measure human life against

planets sucked into their suns’

bulked-up mass, and ask why write

when orbits dissolve

like crystal fronds blanching

a window––so much coiled

energy played out. As soon as ask

why love, if love can disappear, says

the fly, and won’t you get me out of here?

––Joyce Peseroff

This is a poem about a house fly, Musca domestica. This is a poem about humanity, homo sapiens. It concerns a moment, a season, a lifetime, an eternity. Not bad for two dozen lines of verse. It comes from the hand of Joyce Peseroff, a frequent Red Letter contributor. Poet, essayist, and educator; her sixth collection, Petition, was designated a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Book Award. As a talented editor, she’s helped to clarify and fortify our literary tradition with collections like: Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake; The Ploughshares Poetry Reader; and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon. For years, she directed and taught in UMass Boston’s MFA Program, helping cultivate a new generation of writers. In today’s ‘unassuming’ poem, the speaker seems to be attending to domestic chores, her attention snagged by the ‘nattering’ of a house fly trapped “Between blinds and the windowpane”––which, we quickly come to see, is a realm situated between our own figurative blindness and a window that might offer us the world.

We are witnessing what may be the final struggle of this insect’s life––“The fly’s been trapped beside the frame/ for two days, complaining. Starving?” What a quietly devastating afterthought of a question––and what does that reveal about the speaker? (This morning, while drinking my coffee, the radio spoke of a hospital destroyed in Lebanon, drone attacks on Kharkiv, the continued suffering in Gaza, the civil war in South Sudan.) “How much time before a black knot/ swivels on the sill, legs in the air, for me to vacuum…”? My ear thrilled to the sonic qualities of that line: the sharp-edged consonants in black and knot; and, countering, the suppleness of those l’s in swivels and sill, attempting to lull us. And after all: it’s only an insect’s life at stake here. That is, until the poet slips in an offhand query: “How long/ in fly years?” The duration of each mortal span, great or small––what is more crucial to each living being? But, like the rest of us, this adult observer has moved beyond her child-sized apprehension of the universe, and now “measure(s) human life against/ planets sucked into their suns’/ bulked-up mass.” Of course, such immensity can have a detrimental effect on consciousness, making our lives seem infinitesimal by comparison. So why worry so much––why continue to labor so hard, conveying thought, ink to paper, “when orbits dissolve/ like crystal fronds blanching/ a window?” Why indeed––I entertained that very thought––all the while my fingers continuing to pound on the laptop keyboard?

Some might argue that the very idea of kings and deities was created so that these encompassing concerns and confounding questions might be given a platform––a place where the populace, too busy with their day-to-day survival, can pause to consider them. Or might a mere fly––his nasally whine, his diminutive tragedy––be potent enough of a sybil as to prompt our deepest self-examination? “As soon as ask/ why love, if love can disappear, says/ the fly.” (I am 75-years-old, far closer to the end of my life than the beginning. My wife and I have been a couple for nearly five decades. I have written several thousand poems, and the vast majority will never be seen by any eyes other than my own. And yet I continue to write them, still attempt to listen for love’s urgency. What for? Why bother?) But, while lost in philosophy, the fly’s complaint cuts through the static: “and won’t you get me out of here?” Indeed, how simple might it be to crank open that window, letting the breeze and spring sun inside, and allowing something vital to fly free? The answer––like the fly, like the poet––is pending. In my household and yours.

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/