Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: The Red Letter Poem Project The Red Letters 3.0: A New Beginning (Perhaps)

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 #82

Before I say anything else, let me first offer a warning: today’s Red Letter poem is about violence – and the response to violence by even the most innocent among us. Yet to my mind this poem, matter-of-fact in its cruelty, still conjures a shadow of hope (oh, the spirit of that little boy!) But the primary reason I’m offering it for your consideration: I think it’s very nearly a perfect poem – and by that, I simply mean that not a word seems extraneous, no gesture wasted nor phrase that could better be positioned elsewhere. It moves with utter necessity and carries us to places we likely won’t expect. Authenticity in art is capable of transforming even the most painful situations into moments of human discovery.

John Pijewski has labored for years on a book-length sequence of poems entitled Collected Father. They depict, with nightmarish intensity, the household he and his brother grew up in, its emotional climate was always dominated by their father’s propensity for violence and abuse of alcohol. But, long before, the father’s own heart had been transformed when, as a young man, he was forced into a Nazi labor camp during World War II – a brutal and dehumanizing experience from which he never recovered. If it is a truism that violence begets violence, then the real question is: how may that cycle be broken? It’s a problem John has wrestled with all his life. His first book, Dinner With Uncle Jozef (Wesleyan University Press), tackled this material, often with a surrealistic approach – but this manuscript presents an even more anguished reckoning. I’m struck by what economical technique he employs here. The title alone not only portrays the dramatic (quasi-religious?) intensity of the circumstance, but also it’s normalization within the household. How, I wonder, will you react to the many twists and reversals, even in so brief a poem? And what in your own life will the poet’s memory provoke? I first read this poem in manuscript quite some time ago and found the imagery has never left me.

Once, during a heated conversation, I said this to my wife: “I know exactly what your problem is” – but don’t worry, gentle reader, it was not criticism I was offering (as she might have thought) but acceptance. “You were raised by imperfect humans. Who had been raised by imperfect humans. And so on down the generations – as were we all.” Our parents’ trauma and confusion can’t help but be visited upon us in turn. But now I’m thinking: weren’t my mother and father able to offer me more attention, more emotional acceptance than their immigrant parents, caught up in their struggles to simply survive? And haven’t my wife and I found ways to be more embracing of our son and his life? And he and his wife, more loving and engaged with their own son? Might we be slowly unbending the warped beam of long human suffering? After spending hours with this poem, it still seems a possibility. I’m hoping you too may find yourself considering what sort of effect you’ve had – or may yet have – on the young people in your life.