The Red Letter Poem Project

 The Red Letter Poem Project

 

The Red Letters 2.0:  When I was first appointed as Poet Laureate for Arlington, MA one of my goals was to help bring the strength and delight of poetry into unexpected settings.  The Red Letter Poems Project was going to be a novel way of sharing Arlington’s poetic voices, sent off in bright red envelopes, a one-off mass mailing intended to surprise and delight.  But when the Corona crisis struck, and families everywhere were suffering a fearful uncertainty in enforced isolation, I converted the idea into an e-version which has gone out weekly ever since.  Because of the partnership I forged with seven organizations, mainstays of our community, the poems have been able to reach tens of thousands of readers, throughout Arlington and far beyond its borders.  I hope you too are grateful that these groups stepped up and reached out: The Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture, The Arlington Center for the Arts, The Arlington Public Library, The Arlington International Film Festival, Arlington Community Education, The Council on Aging, and YourArlington.com – each of which distributes or posts the new Red Letter installments and, in many cases, provide a space where all the poems of this evolving anthology continue to be available.  And I’m delighted to add our newest RLP partner: Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene – a blog that is a marvelous poetry resource.

 

But now we are experiencing a triple pandemic: the rapid spread of the Covid virus, which then created an economic catastrophe, and served to further expose our long-standing crises around race and social justice.  My hope is to have the Red Letters continue as a forum for poetic voices – from Arlington and all of the Commonwealth – that will help us gain perspective on where we are at this crucial moment and how we envision a healing will emerge.  So please: pass the word, submit new poems, continue sharing the installments with your own e-lists and social media sites (#RedLetterPoems, #ArlingtonPoetLaureate, #SeeingBeyondCorona), and help further the conversation.  Art-making has always been the way we human beings reflect on what is around us, work to alter our circumstances, and dream of what may still be possible.  In its own small way, the Red Letters intends to draw upon our deepest voices to promote just such a healing and share our enduring hope for something better.    

 

If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your in-box plus notices about future poetry events, send an e-mail to: steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com with the subject line ‘mailing list’.

 

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 #57

 

 

“A strange art – music” wrote the 19^th century short story master Guy de Maupassant; “— the most poetic and precise of all the arts, vague as dream and precise as algebra.”  This won’t come as news to Rita Dove – writer, educator and, more importantly, one of America’s most celebrated poets.  She began studying the cello at age 10 and added the viola da gamba in her twenties – but gradually her musical allegiance shifted from the bow to the pen; and the rest, as they say, is history.

Her 1986 breakthrough collection, Thomas and Beulah, was inspired by the lives of her maternal grandparents and the ‘Great Migration’ that resulted in so many Black families resettling in the North.  The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, making her only the second African American at the time to be so honored.  Since then, a stream of impressive books has followed – and a thorough accounting of the accolades from her lifetime in letters would require much more space than I have at my disposal, but let me mention just two: in 1993, she was appointed as the United States Poet Laureate; and in 2011, President Barack Obama hung the prestigious National Medal of Arts around her neck.

But reading through the poetry, it’s clear that her musical training still holds sway.  The rhythmical structure, for example, is never merely a support for the language of her poems; it is, in and of itself, a meaning-making instrument by which the poet sounds the reader's emotional depth and helps them navigate uncharted waters.  This is especially true in “Testimony: 1968”, the poem I selected for this week’s Red Letter.  It will appear in Rita’s forthcoming Playlist for the Apocalypse, her eleventh collection, to be released this summer from W. W. Norton (and used with the kind permission of the poet.)  Here, she steps away from the improvisational riffs of free verse to return to the villanelle, a centuries-old ballad-like verse form from the French.  Like music, such poems are mechanisms for measuring time: progressions and delays; repetitions and sudden shifts; perfections and (painfully) the all-too-human imperfections within our lives.  When I read Rita’s poem, my first reaction was: still?!  How can such a dirge still be au courant, a half-century from the events she’s calling to mind?  How can it be that we’ve learned nothing from our troubled history?  As the poet seems to both speed up and slow down time’s passage, the poem does indeed take on the vague malaise of bad dreams but also the exacting algebra of our recent racial reckoning: who and what resides on either side of the American equal sign?  Rita Dove offers no easy assurances.  We readers are left to solve for X.     

 

 

Testimony: 1968

 

 

Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken?

No more princes for the poor. Loss whittling you thin.

Grief is the constant now, hope the last word spoken.

 

In a dance of two elegies, which circles the drain? A token

year with its daisies and carbines is where we begin.              

Who comforts you now? That the wheel has broken

 

is Mechanics 101; to keep dreaming when the joke’s on

you? Well, crazier legends have been written.                          

Grief is the constant now; hope, the last word spoken

 

on a motel balcony, shouted in a hotel kitchen. No kin

can make this journey for you. The route’s locked in.              

Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken

 

the bodies of its makers? Beyond the smoke and                    

ashes, what you hear rising is nothing but the wind. 

Who comforts you? Now that the wheel has broken,

 

grief is the constant. Hope: the last word spoken.

 

 

                                                –– Rita Dove

 

Ash by Gloria Mindock

 

Ash

by Gloria Mindock

Copyright © 2021 Gloria Mindock

Glass Lyre Press

Glenview, IL

ISBN 978-1-941783-75-7

Softbound, 69 pages, $16

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Life can be extremely dark for many people. For Gloria Mindock that darkness is expressed in her wonderful poetry. Her previous books include I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me, Whiteness of Bone, Nothing Divine Here and Blood Soaked Dresses, each with its own degree of the dark side that readers of her poetry expect and respect.

In Ash, her latest volume of dark poetry Mindock exceeds expectations. Beginning the book are four prose poems which make me laugh, though most readers might not find the initial offerings as humorous as I do.

So what is ash? Ash is the remains after a fire and a metaphor for the disintegration, wearing away that occurs in relationships. This is the theme of Mindock’s poems and a reader may suspect that her writing in this volume recalls a husband or husbands, a lover or lovers or perhaps friends.

In “Protected” we meet an anonymous man whose life is reduced to ash:

Inside his house was his life,

protected by a roof.

By the time the firemen got there,

it was gone.

He sifts through what remains,

eyes sunk, hands asleep,

brain idle for hours.

The man surfaces his heart.

He carries it away deliberately.

It still beats, and he breathes asking.

how much sorrow can this heart take?

There is never an answer.

In “Bitten” there a revelation telling readers more about a relationship in which the the other person is the loser.:

I was bitten by your heart, injured and

burnt by the flame.

The crackling was so loud, it hurt my ears.

Did I listen to my own voice which was clear?

No. I should have taken it seriously.

Everywhere I went in the house were his clothes,

his books, his life, which I let dust collect on.

Things got smokier, battling the embers with

false waters.

It did not work.

Tomorrow we find each other’s breath

faithfully flowing in the wind.

Gloria Mindock’s poetry is filled with angst, anguish, heartbreak and fright. For example in “Exit” she writes “I hide from you in ways/you’ll never know.” Or in “Carrots” the first stanza reads, “There is blood on my hands/from the knife./It was an accident I said as I/sliced the carrots into tiny roundness.” What happens next is the expected loss of appetite. But this is really about a relationship in which the knife, the carrot and the blood symbolize the negative aspects of two people fighting, the aggressive one and the passive aggressive partner.

In the poem “I Don’t Think of You” we see the discarding of a relationship compared to a lawn that has not been tended and has grown brown and ugly. It is a metaphor for the people or events Mindock experienced over time.

I don’t think of you,

not even in my dreams.

There is no existence between

your heart and mine.

Your heart I carved up

in the thick air.

Pieces rain down on the lawn.

Dead with no color, not keeping the yard beautiful,

Just something that blends in

over time.

Knives are important in this volume of poetry. They are used as the symbolic severing of association with others who become the ash of a relationship that was doomed to end and left smoldering.

The book is a losing battle of intimacy. Mindock’s imagery is extraordinary, showing he depth of her understanding of human suffering. The stark scenes of falling apart or destruction of love is written in a memorable voice which is ultimately brave despite the wounds and pain suffered in relationships that were never meant to be.

Gloria Mindock’s Ash is a must read for those who enjoy poetry on the edge or verse that rings with the futility of failed love.

Ash is written by the former Poet Laureate of Somerville, MA, in 2017 and 2018. She was awarded the 5^th and 40^th Moon Prize from Writing in a Woman’s Voice for her poems “Adventure” and “Listen” which are in her book Whiteness of Bone. Mindock was awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award and was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for Community Service by the Newton Writing an Publishing Center. She has been a visiting artist at Tufts Experimental College, Northeastern University, Endicott College and Bunker Hill Community College.

This is an extraordinary book by a wonderful poet whose words have brought much to the understanding of the dark side of human nature. Readers of Mindock’s poetry will become enthralled with this first-class poet.

___________________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Poet Laureate, Brookline, MA 2017-2020

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Author, War Zones (Nixes Mate Books)

The Lynching Of Leo Frank (Big Table Publishing)

The Red Letter Poem Project: Now Hosted By the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

 

The Red Letter Poem Project

The Red Letters 2.0: When I was first appointed as Poet Laureate for Arlington, MA one of my goals was to help bring the strength and delight of poetry into unexpected settings. The Red Letter Poems Project was going to be a novel way of sharing Arlington’s poetic voices, sent off in bright red envelopes, a one-off mass mailing intended to surprise and delight. But when the Corona crisis struck, and families everywhere were suffering a fearful uncertainty in enforced isolation, I converted the idea into an e-version which has gone out weekly ever since. Because of the partnership I forged with seven organizations, mainstays of our community, the poems have been able to reach tens of thousands of readers, throughout Arlington and far beyond its borders. I hope you too are grateful that these groups stepped up and reached out: The Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture, The Arlington Center for the Arts, The Arlington Public Library, The Arlington International Film Festival, Arlington Community Education, The Council on Aging, and YourArlington.com – each of which distributes or posts the new Red Letter installments and, in many cases, provide a space where all the poems of this evolving anthology continue to be available. And I’m delighted to add our newest RLP partner: Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene – a blog that is a marvelous poetry resource.

But now we are experiencing a triple pandemic: the rapid spread of the Covid virus, which then created an economic catastrophe, and served to further expose our long-standing crises around race and social justice. My hope is to have the Red Letters continue as a forum for poetic voices – from Arlington and all of the Commonwealth – that will help us gain perspective on where we are at this crucial moment and how we envision a healing will emerge. So please: pass the word, submit new poems, continue sharing the installments with your own e-lists and social media sites (#RedLetterPoems, #ArlingtonPoetLaureate, #SeeingBeyondCorona), and help further the conversation. Art-making has always been the way we human beings reflect on what is around us, work to alter our circumstances, and dream of what may still be possible. In its own small way, the Red Letters intends to draw upon our deepest voices to promote just such a healing and share our enduring hope for something better.

If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your in-box plus notices about future poetry events, send an e-mail to: steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com with the subject line ‘mailing list’.

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 #56

Elizabeth Bishop – one of America’s great poets – remained deeply skeptical of the very artform to which she devoted her life. She feared its tendency toward pretense, posturing, imaginative self-deception. In an essay, she declared: “Writing poetry is an unnatural act. It takes great skill to make it seem natural…“. I think, then, she’d have been intrigued and heartened by the work of Chen Chen, a young poet who is currently making literary waves. His debut collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions) won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award; and his writing has brought him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kundiman and Saltonstall Foundations, and Lambda Literary. A scion of Frank O’Hara and his ‘walking around poems’, Chen Chen invites the reader onto the emotional rollercoaster ride that is his inner monologue. Written in a kind of fevered vernacular, the poems are by turns playful, puzzling, startling, and always wildly imaginative. The poet himself has commented in interviews that “I forget how sad some of my poems are because people tend to point out the humor.” But we are so much more willing to take those emotional plunges because of the bracing momentum he’s created, his unspoken belief that the ride is far from over and more breathless surprises await.

Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence. In his poetry, he writes about family – both the one he was born into and that sense of the familial he endeavors to create. Poems touch on the cross-cultural riptides of being a gay Asian male in a society not always hospitable to those qualities. But above all, I think Chen Chen’s work is about joy, in all its manifestations: those all-too-rare skyfuls of fireworks and the diminutive sparkle of the everyday. In his poem “Spell to Find Family”, he writes: “My job is to trick// myself into believing/ there are new ways/ to find impossible honey.” And he performs this trick with deftness and aplomb. Ms. Bishop would approve.

Self-Portrait as So Much Potential

Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.

 

As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.

 

Realizing I hate the word “sip.”

 

But that’s all I do.

 

I drink. So slowly.

 

& say I’m tasting it. When I’m just bad at taking in liquid.

 

I’m no mango or tomato. I’m a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I’m an

arctic attic.

 

Come amble & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.

 

I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.

 

I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on

my brothers.

 

She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible

grandchildren ready to gobble.

 

They will be better than mangoes, my brothers.

 

Though I have trouble imagining what that could be.

 

Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.

–– Chen Chen

 

Grammatically Inclined: The Missing Link in Educational De-evolution B. Lynne Zika

Grammatically Inclined: The Missing Link in Educational De-evolution

 B. Lynne Zika

In a remote, dilapidated corner of higher education, a solitary coin clatters into a metal box; a hinge squeaks; a furtive hand darts forward and captures a weekly paper. The paper is folded into the lining of a London Fog and makes its way to the safety of a private office. There, spread-eagled on a pockmarked desk, the tabloid of academia offers up scathing headlines to shock and confirm its readers:

70% of College Grads Failed Grammar Quiz

PhD Flatlines English Exam

and the simpler: Students, Meet the Comma

A university instructor blames the issue on students’ unwillingness to read. An academic essayist holds the high school teacher accountable. A high school teacher labors to salvage damaged goods. An elementary teacher photocopies and mails to parents: “Johnny does not understand how to write a sentence. Please read to him at home.”

Obscured, perhaps, by our most legitimate academic angst (or compounded by our apathy) is a simple cause: Johnny cannot write a sentence because Johnny does not know what a sentence is. The abandonment of comprehensive instruction in English grammar has relieved many a student—and doomed many more to fail.

During the 1960s, grammar was largely dropped from English courses. Although more recent research indicates the positive effects of grammar instruction, prejudicial attitudes and teachers who were, themselves, never recipients of direct instruction have perpetuated its dearth. However, grammar instruction can benefit students’ writing such that replacing writing or vocabulary instruction with grammar can actually be a more productive use of class time¹.

As manager of a staff of editors at a major public television station, I tested numerous candidates for hire. I turned away a sixth-grade teacher unaware of the “could of” imbedded in her resumé. I rejected professional writers with degrees in English or journalism who could not differentiate between “its” and “it’s” or repair a comma splice. I, too, have feared for the literacy of our nation.

In 1966, Miss Goodgame of Sylacauga High imposed the cruelest assignment her students had ever suffered. She required us to memorize 100 rules of punctuation. Each student would be tested; each required (and allowed) to take the examination 10, 20, 100 times—or until the student accomplished an A.

I fell into conversation one day with several of my classmates. “She’s awful,” they said. I said, “No, she isn’t. She’s just giving us the hammers and nails.”

“C.J.,” I said, “what if your mother tried to bake a cake for your birthday but didn’t own a mixing bowl? Larry, what if your dad said he’d loan you the car as soon as he repaired the carburetor, but he didn’t have a screwdriver or a wrench? Bonnie, what if you found a note your boyfriend had written that said, ‘My girlfriend Suzy and I are going to the game Friday night’?” C.J. commented that her mother would just go to the bakery. Maybe it was only the lunch bell ringing, but I thought I saw a flicker of interest in Bonnie.

That afternoon, Bonnie caught up with me in the hall.

“My girlfriend COMMA,” she said, “Suzy COMMA and I, right?” I nodded and she grinned. “Rule #43: ‘Separate items in a series with a comma.’”

I didn’t have the heart to mention the fact that commas may also be used with appositives, but I had an inkling that, thanks to Miss Goodgame, Bonnie would pick it up on her own.

As for me, when given the results of my own applicant tests at aforementioned public television station, I was a bit aggrieved by my two errors but mollified when told that no one had ever made only two mistakes. Of course, I knew where the credit lay: Miss Goodgame and her 100 Punctuation Rules at Sylacauga High.

1 Wikipedia, “Linguistics in education”