Red Letter Poem #164

 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 #164

 

 

 

 

It’s graduation season – and mine was yesterday.  After forty-four years as a poet-in-residence – working through the Massachusetts Cultural Council and conducting programs in hundreds of elementary and secondary schools throughout the Commonwealth and beyond – I have decided to step away from those larger teaching commitments to make room for. . .whatever my days have in store.  It’s going to involve quite an adjustment, I’m sure – because, for as long as I can remember, a good deal of my psychic energy has been devoted to exploring new ways of turning students on to their own imaginative resources and enrolling them into the vast literary academy where every thoughtful reader matriculates.  Ours is not a species where the just-born are equipped to survive on their own, so we are all beholden to those who came before us, offered shelter, and helped teach us the lay of the land.  I hope it comes as no surprise that every individual – no matter their parental status, profession, or path through this world – has had student and teacher as part of their curriculum vitae.

 

Since the job of poet will not secure a livelihood for any but the rarest of individuals, we are forced to seek gainful employment in other areas and, in our country, teaching (in some fashion) is the most common choice.  Today’s Red Letter poet, Barry Sternlieb, worked as an elementary and middle school teacher for decades (and an exceptional one, by all accounts) – even while developing his careers as poet, small press publisher, and letterpress printer.  Like most poets I know, he was content to work at other jobs in order to support the primary one he felt he was born to – and most (I am happy to report) would not wish they’d chosen (or were chosen by) some other, more lucrative profession.  Poetry sustains, in ways we never imagined when first starting out on this path.  Perhaps that’s why we are so grateful for those artists, those teachers, who fortified our precarious journey and helped us learn to navigate.  In today’s Letter, Barry shares a poem from Sole Impression, his marvelous retrospective collection published recently by Codhill Press.  The work earned the Pauline Uchmanowicz Award, and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry.  The poem celebrates another storied poet from Western Massachusetts, Paul Metcalf; the great grandson of Herman Melville, Metcalf created his own literary genre with books that are inimitable collages of history, cultural anthropology, natural science, and the cartography of our imaginative life.  Like the Sung Dynasty poet/recluse imagined here in the scroll painting, Paul (and Barry himself, and so many devoted practitioners of this art form) traveled widely but then chose some small corner of the world hospitable to his creative efforts and rooted his life there.  Paul was a mentor and honored member of that literary community, far from the clamor of Boston; Barry speaks with pride about having published a chapbook and several broadsides by his friend.  “The Illumination” (making great use of the varied meanings inherent in that term) pays homage to the small but trustworthy light that results from such a committed life, a beacon capable of guiding other travelers.  Paul Metcalf and his ancient Chinese counterparts have long since graduated into carbon and starlight.  Yet our June night sky is ablaze with all their candles in all their distant windows across the cloud-strewn hills of memory.

 

 

The Illumination

 

for Paul Metcalf  (1917-1999)

 

 

As we enter

the old hilltown graveyard,

stone rows rise

 

toward the church

like a long flight

of stillness, but the afternoon

 

flows with rain and fog

recalling that Sung Dynasty scroll,

Thatched Hut on Orphan Mountain,

 

where the nameless hermit

can’t be seen.

Just a wild line

 

of peaks streaming

into clouds

and the blink

 

of his one room shack

where a candle

is left burning.

 

 

––Barry Sternlieb

 

 

 

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