Red Letter Poem #154

 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 #154

 

 

 

 

My mind seems to go there of its own volition: last snow erased, sun returned, afternoons outdoors – and I can almost feel their presence, these tightly-wrapped buds, surprising bits of color.  I’m excited by the knowledge that each pert slow-motion eruption contains whole worlds not-yet-visible, filling the mind with its flowering, with the fruitfulness that must follow. 

 

Not garden blossoms (though they, too, are a captivating presence these days); no, I’m thinking about haiku – those potent three-line poems from Japan that have proliferated across the planet, one of the most popular forms of poetry written today.  And since the form is predicated on careful observation of the natural world, it is integral to every season, not just this one; but as I watch spring rapidly remaking the New England landscape, I seem to find myself scanning my bookshelf for titles by Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki. . .and, not surprisingly, Arlington’s own Brad Bennett.  Featured several times previously in the Letters, Brad is a contemporary practitioner and teacher par excellence of this literary form whose roots extend, first, back to medieval Japan – and then a millennia further to the Chinese four-line jintishi.   He’s a writer wholly committed to the practice, which means to the daily discipline of being present to the most extraordinary and the most mundane of experiences – searching for the focused image that somehow unlocks an unseen world.  So I asked Brad for a sampling of his spring haiku to help us celebrate both the new season and serve as a prelude to April’s Poetry Month.

 

Most of Brad’s haiku resemble what we typically expect – visually-clear, psychically-charged three-line verses.  But some of his poems are the newer style of one-line haiku which, in ways, more closely resembles how the poem had traditionally been written: a single line of characters descending from the top of the page, where only a kireji, or cutting word demarcates the end of a phrase, often hinting at a parallel train of thought or prompting a sudden leap.  Take this poem for example:

 

spring clouds I have yet to write

 

You can see where thought suddenly jumps the track and veers into a new direction (were those spring clouds what the poet intended to compose – or a gentle scolding that the poet had yet to lift the pen that day?)  And how would you parse the syntax for this one-line gem:

 

each day follows the next duckling

 

Again, my mind flirts with an imagined comma, wholly shifting the meaning.  Some of these poems are taken from Brad’s earlier collection, a drop of pond, or the recently-published a box of feathers – both issued by Red Moon Press.  Returning each day to poems like these, I notice a bit more of their unfolding – not unlike the early daffodils in my wife’s garden; and this means I am watching how language seeds and takes root within my own mind, adding a fertility both unexpected and tremendously pleasurable.  The haiku is not a display of the writer’s verbal acuity; it is a thought-mechanism lending its generator to the reader, an invitation to more fully participate in this moment.  And this.  And of course. . .

 

 

Spring Haiku

 

 

my first

first warbler poem—

a break in the rain

 

 

spring

the dead owl

mostly soil

 

 

kite weather

an inchworm spins

at the end of a thread

 

 

cumulus clouds

a wheelbarrow full

of topsoil

 

 

  ––Brad Bennett

 

 

 

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