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/3054-redletter-092421), 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 #81
Immersion. Most artists – most people, in fact, who make anything requiring both skill and patience – will describe this as one of the great motivating elements in what can often be a formidable and isolating labor. Years back I interviewed the poet Donald Hall who described waking often in the night and checking the clock to see how many hours he had to force himself to sleep before he could have the great pleasure of waking to another day of writing. “Curiously, or frustratingly,” he said of such work, “the greatest happiness is not to know you are happy, is not to know what time it is, is to be lost in the hour.“ It’s a concept I first encountered as a young man in my exploration of ancient Chinese verse. In one of his famous quatrains, the Tang poet Li Bai depicts a moment at his retreat cottage high in the Ching-t’ing Mountains. After giving himself over to a prolonged and open-hearted contemplation of his surroundings – a meditative practice that many here have borrowed from the East – he finds himself watching evening fall as the birds suddenly vanish, sensing the approach of winter. Li Bai concludes the brief poem: “We sit together, the mountain and me,/ until only the mountain remains.”
I think of Jenny Barber as a poet of quiet immersions. Focusing on subjects that range from the mundane to those dramatic life-changing alterations that appear suddenly like storms, her poems provide a sort of gradual absorption that lures readers into participating in the moment’s unfolding. Today’s piece, debuting here, will appear in 2022 in her new collection The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made from The Word Works. Jenny was the founder and long-time editor of the literary journal Salamander and – I am happy to report – has recently been appointed as Poet Laureate for neighboring Brookline, MA. Today’s Red Letter is about both a literal and figurative immersion in the natural world where (as Li Bai reminds us) the borders between ourselves and our surroundings can become quite blurred, and something unexpected may be experienced. Located at the spot where Germany, Austria and Switzerland converge, the actual Lake Constance is one of Europe’s largest freshwater bodies – fortuitously named, it seems, to remind us that such experiences are everywhere present; it’s only our deep attention that is fleeting. Here, though, Jenny’s Constance seems to be both literary and emotional as well as geographic – a place, I hope, located not very far from any of our front doors.
Lake Constance
Sunlight in the water streaming from
my arms, the bubbles of my mouth.
No one else around. “I’m here
between the heavens and you,
the edge of sky and the tops of trees,”
an angel says, “between
the burning world and flooded world,
the first day and the last,”
and his words take on the sound
of waves mumbling onshore,
July drought mixed with August rain,
patches of blue among the clouds
falling to the water like dropped leaves,
their shadows gliding over fish,
breathing through them, into them.
No: not an angel, not the words,
but the lake cradling my limbs
in ripples striated with light.
–– Jennifer Barber
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