Red Letter Poem #147

 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

 

 

 

To the Red Letter community:

 

Many who received the announcement that I’d completed my third and final term as Arlington’s Laureate wrote in to offer their appreciation – but also to ask, with a certain anxiousness: did that mean the Red Letters would come to an end?  I am happy to let you know that I will continue the Letters for as long as I have fine poems worth sharing and engaged readers to receive them.  And thank you for all your kind thoughts.

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #147

 

 

 

 

Of all the verbal gymnastics and prosodic invention that have shaped the contemporary poem, to my mind the venerable image is still at the heart of things, the lynchpin that brings vitality to the reading experience.  The image is word-picture, sense-impression, a moment of tangibility.  As readers, it’s something we take possession of, substantiate with the stuff of our own lives – and through that portal we enter the moment unfolding on the page, staking our claim.  Imagism, that ‘brand new’ poetic idea erupting at the dawn of the 20^th century, was old Ez Pound borrowing shamelessly from the 8^th century Tang Dynasty poets he’d been introduced to in translation – which, in turn, was the product of the even more ancient approach embodied in the pictographs/picture-words at the root of the Chinese written language.  Pound believed this quality fostered, in their compact verses, their inclination to show rather than explain; and he felt it might reinvigorate the writing of his contemporaries.  I think it was this quality – vivid, intriguing images – that first drew me into Phil Lewis’ poems. 

 

I met Phil in the Beehive poetry group here at the town library.  A soft-spoken nonagenarian who would, again and again, produce sonnets whose traditional formality would feel effortless, balanced by the voice of a contemporary mind trying to figure it all out.  Phil’s love of poetry was nurtured as a young man at Dartmouth where the presence of poets like Robert Frost and Philip Booth inspired a belief that beauty could crystallize into form – even for a mind as mathematical and analytical as his own.  Phil would go on to teach math to high school students and experiment with early computers as part of the educational process – yet the poems endured.  Because his wife Deb was a talented painter, I like to imagine that images were always part of the lingua franca of their household.  I admired that Phil’s devotion to poetry had none of the careerist drive that has become prevalent today.  When I featured one of his poems as Red Letter #106, it was only the second one he’d ever published in a public forum.  Poetry was just something that gifted him with delight – and insight.

 

Let me offer up Phil’s poem before I risk further comment: 

 

 

Hard Frost

 

 

Not the first frost:
this is the sharpest,
crisping the grass
under bare toes.

 

Stars crowd the sky
to the northwest
above the trees
where the barn stood.

 

On the front lawn
I mark the terrain,
an old dog lifting a leg,
and think of my father,

 

claiming this place
on a November night,
watching the stars
over his barn.

 

 

      ––Phil Lewis

 

 

Even in a free verse poem like “Hard Frost”, there is a crystalline structure at the core upon which these curious images emerge.  The sibilance in that opening stanza whispers beneath our feet like the frozen grass.  But in this brief lyric, the poet is displaying a curious trick of the mind: that the image of what is not can seem as real, as compelling, as the very ground we walk upon.  We’re allowed to wonder about what’s brought us into this scene, and what the barefooted speaker is seeking, wandering land his family once farmed.  The stars in this poem’s night sky are a presence above a constellation of absences – the father’s barn, the father himself – and we’re left to question that very need to claim life as ours (especially since winter, approaching, seems to refute that disposition.)  The poet grasps all of this with a few well-chosen words.  The simple experience of being embodied, in all its human frailty, occupies Phil’s mind – and now ours.  Was it the conjured cold that made me shiver with those last lines – or the fact that I found myself transfixed by the image of Orion or Cassiopeia climbing just above the ridgepole of the barn that the poet was raising out of ink and longing?

 

 

 

The Red Letters 3.0

 

* 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

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner