The Red Letter Poem 90

 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 #90

 

 

Ashen winter skies, bare black branches. . .and abundance.  Gail Mazur’s piece is born from this breathtakingly-beautiful contradiction.  It is one of the finest poems about trees that I’ve ever read (though immediately a voice in my mind contradicts that statement: not trees – daughters! – one of the most loving portrayals of the mother-daughter relationship I’ve ever encountered.)  And perhaps that, too, is part of the poem’s allure: it’s not about one or the other – and nothing so simple as metaphor; I experience it like a projection, through language, of a moment in a woman’s mind as she looks out at the world, her world.  I can almost feel those neural branches that bear the fruit of memory, that foster the weather of emotional impulse and imagination, throwing their shadows across the snowy page.  And because of that, I move along through these tercets in a kind of a winter hush, in an intimate engagement with this woman’s inner voice. 

 

And the speaker is undoubtedly a woman – though the poem made me pray that such generative power might be part of my being as well.  But if you place this poem side-by-side with another hibernal ‘tree’ poem, also written in three-line stanzas – Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man” – I think you’ll sense something of the yin and yang of human consciousness.  If, at this time of the year, you and I are rediscovering our “mind(s) of winter”, it may help us endure the cold season if we traverse the broad expanse and find our own place in the landscape.

 

Poet and educator, Gail Mazur has authored eight poetry collections, the most recent being Land’s End: New and Selected Poems (University of Chicago Press), and from which today’s Red Letter installment is drawn.  Among her many honors, Gail was finalist for the National Book Award, and recipient of numerous fellowships.  The venerable Blacksmith Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA – held near the spot of Longfellow’s fabled “village smithy” and (yet another ‘tree’ poem) that “spreading chestnut-tree” – which Gail created nearly fifty years ago, is still going strong.  It’s one more thing we can be grateful for as we cross another winter solstice.

 

 

Young Apple Tree, December

 

 

What you want for it you'd want

for a child: that she take hold;

that her roots find home in stony

 

winter soil; that she take seasons

in stride, seasons that shape and

reshape her; that like a dancer's,

 

her limbs grow pliant, graceful

and surprising; that she know,

in her branchings, to seek balance;

 

that she know when to flower, when

to wait for the returns; that she turn

to a giving sun; that she know

 

fruit as it ripens; that what's lost

to her will be replaced; that early

summer afternoons, a full blossoming

 

tree, she cast lacy shadows; that change

not frighten her, rather that change

meet her embrace; that remembering

 

her small history, she find her place

in an orchard; that she be her own

orchard; that she outlast you;

 

that she prepare for the hungry world

(the fallen world, the loony world)

something shapely, useful, new, delicious.

 

 

                                    –– Gail Mazur

 

 

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 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/3070-redletter-111121), 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.

Running Out in search of water on the high plains by Lucas Bessire

 

Running Out in search of water on the high plains by Lucas Bessire. Princeton University Press, 2021. 236 pages. $19.69.

Review by Ed Meek

If you find  all the current articles, news and books on climate change overwhelming, one place you might want to start is with Running Out by Lucas Bessire. Running Out is an eminently readable nonfiction hybrid narrative about the author’s attempt to go back home again to the plains where his father owns a ranch and farm that sits atop a body of water called the Ogallala Aquifer. This underground source of irrigation runs all the way from South Dakota and Wyoming, through Colorado and Kansas to Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. A fifth of the wheat, corn cattle and cotton in the US comes from farms and ranches in those states. And that source of water is running out.

Bessire traces his own roots five generations back in Kansas and he returns to the family spread to confront what is referred to as the depletion of the aquifer. At the same time, Bessire is patching relations up with his father who accompanies him on investigative visits to those in control of irrigation and those who work the land. On this journey, Bessire explores the region’s history including our shameful dealings with Native Americans and the destruction of what was once a rich environment populated by millions of buffalo, antelope, wolves and birds. He learns that “southwest Kansas is a front line of the global water crisis.” According to Bessire, “most of the major aquifers in the world’s arid or semi-arid zones are rapidly declining.”

Bessire is an anthropologist by training so he examines the roots of the culture that has brought us to this point. It’s “drill baby drill” as Sarah Palin said, until the wells run dry. Our attitude toward water turns out to be similar to our perspectives about fossil fuels and topsoil and animals. Bessire notes that “over a single three-year period between 1871 and 1874, three to seven million bison were killed.” This occurred because 1872 was “the pivotal year for settler colonization in southwest Kansas.” Prior to that, this was Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne territory. US troops were told to “kill every buffalo you can” because “every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.” Once the food source of native tribes was eradicated, they could be herded onto reservations.

Fast-forward to our current era when “corporate profits are a key part of the aquifer depletion puzzle.” Bessire points out that “Southwest Kansas is home to some of the nation’s largest corporate feeders, beef and poultry-packing plants, slaughterhouses, dairies, milk-drying plants, and hog farms.” This includes massive feedlots of cattle, millions of hogs, plants that produce corn ethanol and bio-diesel. Businesses worth billions.

The farmers and ranch owners tend to be libertarians. “People have the right to do what they want with their land” a local rancher says to Bessire. This perspective is exploited by big business and the rich and powerful. Colin Jerolmack delves into this notion in Up to Heaven and Down to Hell about the devastating effects of fracking in Pennsylvania and the resistance of locals to interfere with the decisions of their neighbors even when those decisions hurt the community.

In Kansas the decisions regarding irrigation are made by the Groundwater Management District who, as representatives of the landowners are committed to “a situation of controlled decline.” The emphasis of the GMD, however, is not on conservation but on business, and this emphasis often comes at the expense of water. There are some landowners who are attempting to cut back on water use but they are in the minority.

The sense of loss that pervades the book is balanced is by Bessire’s lyrical writing which serves as a respite for the reader. “I stepped out of the barn in the cool morning…dogs wagged around my legs. Red cattle lazed by green tanks after watering. Songbirds trilled. Irrigation motors droned. The sun hung just above the eastern horizon. I felt its light warmth brush my skin.” There are many such descriptive passages in the book.

Running Out is also about Bessire’s return to his father’s ranch after leaving years before. He feels a sense of responsibility for what has been done to the plains by his antecedents. He realizes that he had little idea of this when he was growing up in the same way that many of us are only now learning of the effects of burning fossil fuels on our environment and our unwitting complicity in the process, or the effects of systemic racism on Black Americans, or the harmful effects of neoliberal trade policies on the working class.

Bessire does not see an easy way out of the mess we’ve made, but he finds inspiration in his grandmother’s struggle to develop as an individual and his father’s acceptance and help with digging for information for his book. As Bessire says, “trying to respond to a planetary crisis begins with a critical reckoning with the terms of my existence, complicit and otherwise.” We may not have caused these problems we are faced with, but we had better figure out how to address them.

Clearly Hidden by Lindy Bergin Conroe

 

Clearly Hidden by Lindy Bergin Conroe

Review by Doug Holder

In “Clearly Hidden" by Lindy Bergin Conroe, we have a well-honed mystery story about an aptly named woman writer, “Pen.” It seems that this protagonist is having her life threatened by any number of bad-acting men. Conroe, who has worked as a therapist for many years, expertly gets into all the baggage and messiness that comes with life and relationships. But she is a writer as well-- so she does not forget her Holy Grail—writing an engaging novel.

If you are a fan of Cape Cod then you will be especially drawn to this book because of the author’s painterly eye. Her writing can be described as painterly because she evokes the coastal landscape, the azure lap of the ocean, the breath taking views of glacial rock, against the ravages of the sea and time. The sea, maybe because of its primal amniotic pull, is a place for many of the characters to meditate, as the plot thickens.

Conroe traces her character Pen’s progress from a wallflower to an unabashed warrior—against those who seek her demise. And of course, she has help with her beefcake boyfriend---- a romantic interest—that makes things more interesting. As Louie Armstrong sang to his gal Lucy, “ Take your shoes off Lucy/and let’s get juicy”

Any by the way—much to my epicurean pleasure-- Conroe is into food, and can we say there is a lot to 'feast' your eyes on—at one point I had to rush out of my home for a lobster roll and a bear claw.

Highly Recommended.

Somerville's Charlotte Anne Dore-- A singer, puppeteer, and actor who immerses herself in her work.

 I caught up to Somerville's Charlotte Anne Dore to talk about her life and work as a puppeteer, actor,  and singer. It seems what ever this multi-talented person does-- from belting out a few numbers in a cabaret-- expertly manipulating puppets--to playing Mary Jo Kopechne in the major motion picture  "Chappaquiddick," she intensely immerses herself in her work.

First off, how has it been for you-- the artist, to be living in Somerville?

I have lived in Somerville since 1993 and have an art studio in Union square. What I love about Somerville is you can walk everywhere. There are so many beautiful buildings ( although sadly over the last few years some have been knocked down.) I saw a beautiful home on Lowell street with a big garden and thought that has a lot of land and then two weeks later the place was being torn down and they are currently building on it ... it breaks my heart to see beautiful homes get destroyed. When they are renovated I love that. As an artist to see the history and the crafts-person-ship (craftsmanship) of buildings is inspiring. In Somerville you are also close to Boston for work. During the pandemic the Somerville Arts Council really supported artists like myself who lost our income when we couldn’t perform shows for so many months. I had the opportunity to do a live stream for the city and then had an emergency grant-- very grateful.

Talk about multi-talented artists, you are an accomplished puppeteer, actor, coach, and singer. How did you become so eclectic?  What allured you into the world of puppets?

I’ve always loved visual art and always loved music and acting. I grew up watching Shirley Temple films on BBC. I was born and grew up in the UK. The films were already old at the time but I loved the singing and dancing. At a very young age I visited a doll museum and saw an amazing puppet show at Little Angel Marionette Theatre in London. Those two things have made me fascinated with dolls, toys and puppets. I was around 5 when I built my first puppet and ended up building puppets as part of my art exam ( O levels) I took at age 16. This interest went through college and my first job was as a puppeteer at a shopping Mall in the UK. Even though I act professionally as much as I do puppetry, but it’s more unusual people remember the puppetry part. For me puppets are just an extension of acting dance, music, words, your whole creative body is interlinked and that’s why these skills all fit together and compliment one another. Puppets combine all my visual art skills and my theatrical theatre/acting skills into one and ultimately that is where the doors have opened. Pre- pandemic I would present over 100 puppet shows a year. It’s been slow picking back up.

You have been in any number of films. One film was "Chappaquiddick."  This film, released in 2018 dealt with the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, when she drowned in a car driven by Ted Kennedy. You play the mother of Mary Jo. How did you get into the character?  How did you envision the mother?

There is actually footage of Gwen Kopechne talking in an interview and I studied that and her expression in great detail, as well as having dialect coaching from the film company. I researched the role and immersed myself in the lines. When I approach roles my goal is to “become.” In acting its sometimes termed “ the art of becoming” and it is a process. It’s hard to explain in a short article but basically you loose yourself in the role and their motives and situation. I had my hair cut for the role. It’s now finally grown back. The cut looked great but I didn’t feel myself.

I love the " American Song Book." I read that you have now ventured in cabaret. Is it the relative intimacy of Cabaret that you are attracted to? Or perhaps the sniff of decadence as portrayed in the movie "Cabaret?"

I love immersive theatre and have done that for years. My puppet shows are also extremely interactive. I have always loved the dynamic relationship between audience and performer so of course Cabaret is a perfect vehicle because it’s all about telling stories and connecting with the audience. I also LOVE music and singing. I started going to Hump night at Club Cafe a few years ago where the amazing Brian Patton plays shows tunes and people sing along then you get up and sing one song. I had so much great response there I ended up producing 2 solo shows that went really well. I don’t have a solo show planned there just yet but I have started to return and be part of Boston’s Cabaret scene again.

Tell us about some recent and upcoming projects.  Recently you finished a project called " Holiday Tree" can you touch on that?

I wrote a solo show during 2020 and felt it was inspired and needed to be workshopped and developed as an adult/ family ( rather than a kids show per say). I applied for some grants and residencies and was delighted when I was accepted by Appolinaire Theatre at Chelsea Theatre Works for their Resident Artist program. I took them up on the opportunity and self- produced a show that we presented in person and also live streamed around the world thanks to Cambridge Community Center for the Arts who sponsored the livestream

I read that you are available for hire at any number of venues. How should one contact you?

My websites have contact links and I can also be called 617-633-2832

Also e mail rosalitaspuppets@aol.com. My websites also have contact info and contact forms www.rosalitaspuppets.com and www.charlottedore.com

Red Letter Poem #89

 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 #89

 

 

It’s too long a list – all of Rita Dove’s flourishing accomplishments – but let me boil them down to three: recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for poetry; former United States Poet Laureate; and, currently, the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia (representing her life as a private poet, public artist, and committed educator.)  Back when she gave me permission to print a poem from her then-forthcoming collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse (W. W. Norton), as Red Letter #57, I asked if I might follow it up a few months later with a ‘golden oldie’ – one of her signature pieces, and long a favorite of mine: “American Smooth.”  It was the title poem from her 2004 collection, a sort of rhapsody centered around a couple dancing together in the dark.  I always thought the piece operated on two distinct levels: first, as a love poem about that moment when the self-consciousness inherent in our public gestures is somehow surpassed – if momentarily – and we feel our hearts and minds rise into something like the sublime.  But I also took it to be a kind of ars poetica about the years of diligent practice an artist must commit to if she or he is to develop genuine craftsmanship – all so that, at the crucial moment, what might have simply been a workmanlike effort actually elevates both the poet and poem into those rarefied heights to which all art aspires.

 

But then Playlist… appeared and, after reading through a long section – The Little Book of Woe – I turned to the back of the collection to a group of lengthy notes the poet included.  In one entry, I (and all Rita’s devoted readers) received some rather startling news.  Those shocking bits of sentences still echo: “On December 7, 1997…stepped in the shower, and discovered…numb from the chest down…diagnosis…Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis.”  This can be a devastating illness and, especially at the time, treatments were not particularly effective.  She explained that, in struggling to comprehend her situation – but “first and foremost, to spare my aging parents” – she decided not to make the news public. . .until now.  She also told how her husband scoured the Internet and came upon an experimental drug for MS that was having promising results.  Eventually the treatment was able to reduce the loss of muscular control and provided tremendous relief.  But my mind leaped when I read how she relearned to walk steadily through, of all things, ballroom dancing “which taught me how numb toes could gauge balance by how much pressure was exerted on the floor.”

 

Now, in re-reading “American Smooth”, I’m engaged by an inescapable third dimension of the poem: of course love is still central in the piece, as is the reflection on all sorts of art-making endeavors.  But I also experience the poem as a very intimate document, a sort of radical declaration of hope.  It strikes me as the sort of transmission the subconscious mind conveys directly to the hand, and which it may take the intermediary mind of the poet months or years to fully comprehend.   Perhaps, when the poem was published, the third set of meanings was only intended for two sets of eyes – her husband’s and her own – buoyed by this swelling music.  But this continued practice helped Rita’s body stabilize its place in the material world so that other dances, other poems might follow – and for that I am grateful.  Decades after that initial shock, this fine writer continues to partner with us across the imagined dancefloor that is each printed page.  Our mortal reprieves, our escapes from gravity are – by their very nature – only temporary affairs.  But at that surprising elevation a fine poem sometimes achieves, we can better understand the larger patterns we’re enmeshed in; and perhaps we return to the dance with just a little more life in our step.

 

 

 

American Smooth

 

 

 

We were dancing—it must have

been a foxtrot or a waltz,

something romantic but

requiring restraint,

rise and fall, precise

execution as we moved

into the next song without

stopping, two chests heaving

above a seven-league

stride—such perfect agony,

one learns to smile through,

ecstatic mimicry

being the sine qua non

of American Smooth.

And because I was distracted

by the effort of

keeping my frame

(the leftward lean, head turned

just enough to gaze out

past your ear and always

smiling, smiling),

I didn’t notice

how still you’d become until

we had done it

(for two measures?

four?)—achieved flight,

that swift and serene

magnificence,

before the earth

remembered who we were

and brought us down.

 

 

­­                       –– Rita Dove

 

 

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 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/3070-redletter-111121), 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.