Red Letter Poem #176

 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 #176

 

 

 

 

 

Friend

 

 

not in the woods, the desert,

not to violence or illness,

 

not in the shuffle or in

the crowd, not by default

 

and not to someone,

not to time, not

 

long, just lost to me

 

 

                        ––Martha Collins 

 

 

There’s so much I’d like to say about so diminutive a poem!  It’s such a vast and unsettling thought-landscape that Martha Collins presents here, deftly sketched with just a few dozen words.  Martha is, of course, one of America’s most esteemed poets, a master of minimalist technique and the power of elliptical thought.  Exploring the body of her work, we soon discover how this poet can say more with syntactical shifts and intentional silences, carefully embedded within spare lines, than many poets capture in their fulsome parade of stanzas.  No, let me correct myself: time and again, the poet is going to lead readers into challenging territory and enable us to suddenly say to ourselves what has been unearthed but unarticulated in her verse.  The completion of her poems takes place only when we invest our deep attention and make them our own. 

 

But first, indulge me: if we were sitting together and came across this poem, I’d beg you to go back and read the piece again, and perhaps a third time.  It takes that sort of patience before the poem begins to give up its secrets.  We pick our way, from line to line, as if moving across a rutted field, taking care with each step to secure our footing.   Starting out: all those negative statements confuse us a bit––precisely what is missing from those woods, that desert?  But line two shifts the grammar slightly with those prepositions–– to what or who are we reaching in the dark?  Something has escaped us and, by the third line, we guess what it is: the word lost.  Lost is the missing piece that would fulfill all those colloquial expressions.  Still, who’s been lost––not to illness or in the shuffle––and why?  With line five’s seemingly simple statement–– “not to someone”––suddenly we perceive this may be a matter of the heart.  And when we reach the final line (bolstered by its connection to the title), the statement “just lost to me” both satisfies (granting us the understanding we’ve sought since we began reading) and leaves us bereft.  We’ve identified the yearning within this poem only to––and without warning––find ourselves engulfed by the pain of this absence.  Loss is hard enough when we can at least specify its cause (the result of illness, violence, distance––or when our affections are supplanted by someone new); but it’s infinitely harder when there is no reason whatsoever.  Sometimes what was present yesterday is simply nonexistent today.  I thought of the film The Banshees of Inisherin; except Martha’s island is a mere seven lines across.

 

Avid readers of Martha Collins’ poetry have gotten used to, not so much single poems, but long interwoven cycles of poetry––collections that have brought her more honors and awards than I can list here.  There was the acclaimed trilogy of books (Blue Front, White Papers, and Admit One,) focused on race and American history; and a pair of volumes of interlocking poems (Day Unto Day and Night Unto Night) that act as a journal of a heart and mind making their way through time.  Most recently, Martha published Casualty Reports (University of Pittsburgh Press) which centers on coal mining as a means of examining what’s been brutally excavated from the American dream.  But as we wait to see what encompassing project will next seize her imagination, I am delighted to have a pair of new short poems to share as Red Letters.  If you’re like me, at the very moment “Friend” concluded, a brand-new stanza began to appear, scrawled across memory––and it was centered around a name, a clearly-envisioned face.  Mine was a thirty-year friendship that one day simply vanished.  It is more than a little astonishing to sense how the ache within that unwritten poem was teased out by the hesitations, the evasions, the slow acceptance within the one Martha brought to the page.  Perhaps it’s the ubiquity of this process–– thought-becoming-language––that reminds us of the kinship we all share.  

 

 

 

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