***This is sponsored by the Arlington, Ma. Council of the Arts, and written by Steve Ratiner--Arlington Poet Laureate...... Ratiner founded this program, and many fine poets have appeared here..
*****************************
I was asked to write an essay for Askold Melnyczuk’s Arrowsmith Journal about what I learned from the first year of the Red Letter Project. It also became a meditation about the relationship between poet and reader. If you’d like to take a look, here is a link –
https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices
-- and you’ll also be able to check out the variety of marvelous literary projects that appear under Askold’s Arrowsmith imprint. Enjoy!
The Red Letter Poem Project
The Red Letters 3.0: A New Beginning (Perhaps)
At the outset of the Covid pandemic, when fear was at its highest, the Red Letter Project was intended to remind us of community: that, even isolated in our separate homes, we could still face this challenge together. As Arlington’s Poet Laureate, I began sending out a poem of comfort each Friday, featuring the fine talents from our town and its neighbors. Because I enlisted the partnership of seven local arts and community organizations, distribution of the poems spread quickly – and, with subscribers sharing and re-posting the installments, soon we had readers, not only throughout the Commonwealth, but across the country. And I delighted in the weekly e-mails I’d receive with praise for the poets; as one reader recently commented: “You give me the gift of a quiet, contemplative break—with something to take away and reflect on.”
Then our circumstance changed dramatically again: following the murder of George Floyd, the massive social and political unrest, and the national economic catastrophe, the distress of the pandemic was magnified. Red Letter 2.0 announced that I would seek out as diverse a set of voices as I could find – from Massachusetts and beyond – so that their poems might inspire, challenge, deepen the conversation we were, by necessity, engaged in.
Now, with widespread vaccination, an economic rebound, and a shift in the political landscape, I intend to help this forum continue to evolve – Red Letter 3.0. For the last 15 months, I’ve heard one question again and again: when will we get back our old lives? It may pain us to admit it, but that is little more than a fantasy. Our lives have been altered irrevocably – not only our understanding of how thoroughly interdependent we are, both locally and globally, but how fragile and utterly precious is all that we love. Weren’t you bowled over recently by how good it felt just to hug a friend or family member? Or to walk unmasked through a grocery, noticing all the faces? So I think the question we must wrestle with is this: knowing what we know, how will we begin shaping our new life? Will we quickly forget how grateful we felt that strangers put themselves at risk, every day, so that we might purchase milk and bread, ride the bus to work, or be cared for by a doctor or nurse? Will we slip back into our old drowse and look away from the pain so many are forced to endure – in this, the wealthiest nation on the planet? Will we stop noticing those simple beauties all around us? The poet Mary Oliver said it plainly: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I will continue to offer RLP readers the work of poets who are engaged in these questions, hoping their voices will fortify all of ours.
Two of our partner sites will continue re-posting each Red Letter weekly: the YourArlington news blog (https://www.yourarlington.com/easyblog/entry/28-poetry/3035-redletter-072921), and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene (http://dougholder.blogspot.com). 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.
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 #74
There are no words. It’s a phrase people resort to in moments of overwhelming emotion – sometimes in response to joy but, more commonly, grief. Even at our best, we’re aware of how words cannot match the utter complexity of the lived moment nor fully represent the depth of our response. And yet we feel the need for words nonetheless. Perhaps that’s because language, when fully empowered, forms – not a mirror – but a second self within our experience, a companion that exists both independently but also in a sort of harmony with what we call (for lack of a better term) our real lives. And this is not only true for the author but for we readers as well who may discover, entering this shadow-realm, a new sense of what actually matters in our sunlit days.
Such is the case for poet Doug Holder who, in today’s installment, is allowing us to be one of the “treasured guests” to visit with his wife Dianne before she was recently lost to cancer. It was not the artfulness of this poem that drew me in but its astonishing intimacy. There is no doubt about the actuality behind this scene – and yet, in its poetic incarnation, we feel we are receiving a privileged understanding of these three beings, there on the verge of an overwhelming grief. Doug told me Dianne, the gentlest of souls, was a long-time nurse who also wrote poetry and published a chapbook. But her personal paradise might be the couple’s "cocktail hour” where she’d be “reading, listening to Chet Baker and writing in her journal.”
It is not at all surprising to come across poets willing to dedicate vast amounts of time and vital energy toward exploring their own writing and career. Far less common is an individual who will offer that sort of dedication to promoting the work of other poets, toward enhancing the vitality of the very artform. But that is certainly true of Doug: founder of Ibbetson Street Press, creative writing teacher at Endicott College, and publisher of a host of popular blogs that feature poetry and interviews with diverse writers from Massachusetts and beyond. His ‘Poet to Poet, Writer to Writer’ cable program (blog-spot.com) is a tremendous resource of literary insight and delight. I feel honored to debut this beautiful elegy in the Red Letters.
And yes: there are no words. Yet they are so utterly necessary, we reach for them anyway. And our day is deepened because they were shared.
Dianne At Sleep
(for my wife Dianne Robitaille) As she lays in bed |
–– Doug Holder
No comments:
Post a Comment