Red Letter Poem #153

 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 #153

 

 

 

 

On March 10, 2020, the Governor of Massachusetts declared a state of emergency in response to the Covid pandemic.  Quickly, much of our country entered lockdown, and it didn’t take long for me to see the devastating effects that isolation was having on households and communities.  Fear is always magnified if you believe you’re facing trouble alone.  People were desperate to find ways of connecting with family and friends.  I decided to use my mandate as Arlington’s Poet Laureate to make a modest contribution: to try to remind us that a greater we still enveloped us all; that we’d been through terrible challenges before and would surely survive this one as well.  Isn’t that one of the essential features of any literature, a tangible continuity?  Ten days later, the first Red Letter poem arrived in several thousand inboxes, thanks to a partnership with seven area arts and community organizations.  The weekly poems were intended to provide comfort, insight and – as all art aspires to achieve – an experience of our bedrock commonality.  I was surprised and delighted by how quickly these Letters were embraced.

 

Since the project was rooted in Arlington, I began by seeking out writers from this community – and I had no doubt which poet I’d ask to be Red Letter #1.  Fred Marchant is not only a highly-esteemed poet – author of five award-winning collections – he is an educator, editor, translator and (most important) the sort of individual whose work is informed by a deep commitment to the spirit of a shared world.  Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay to any poet: I don’t just read Fred’s work, I re-read it.  His books do not sit attracting dust on my shelf.   I return to his poetry most often when I’m needing a clear and deeply humane voice, one that both reassures and challenges – especially important in turbulent times like these, when despair is still only a phone call or a headline away.  The Red Letters has since grown to include poets and readers from across the United States and beyond, spreading most often by electronic word-of-mouth.  Today’s installment will mark the beginning of our fourth year of publication – and I couldn’t have a better voice to mark the occasion than Fred’s, here debuting a new poem from what I sense is a new book beginning to take shape.

 

The literary tradition of an ars poetica involves poems attempting to examine the very definition of the art form.  I think something different is taking place in this piece: Fred has shaped a poem that explores the essential relationship between. . .well, I’m not quite certain.  When I first received “hello/stranger”, I thought it was the writer/reader bond made manifest – a sort of prayer mat we might set out before a cherished text.  On the tenth reading, I thought this might be the poet, in a Whitmanesque gesture, welcoming his own self into a new consciousness, into this ancient poetic and spiritual tradition.  I’ve certainly had many mornings when I’ve awoken, feeling a stranger to my own existence and – thank goodness – sometimes a poem was close at hand to focus my attention and help steer my way back home.  My feelings about this poem continue to deepen, though the questions abound – but one thing is always clear: I have no doubt when reading it that I’m that stranger receiving welcome – just as I have little doubt you will be equally convinced it’s you being addressed.  Making our way through the text, we take notice of that straight spine centering our attention, the lines of the sturdy ribcage we almost imagine swelling with respiration – and, perhaps most satisfying, that gentle voice assuring us that there is no need to feel estranged from this living moment.  Fred’s created here a very American version of zazen, each unscrolling breath illuminated with a bright red initial.

 

 

 

hello

          stranger

 

 

this is where

                 you enter

the poem, you’ll

                 need to take

your shoes off,

                 but not your

socks, sit as you

                 wish, cushion

or not, even on

                 a chair, but

keep the spine

                 and windpipe

aligned, upright

                 enough to draw

a straight path

                 from the base

of your being

                 to the place

the gods like

                 to touch,

that tangled nest

                 of neurons

where you have

                 imagined gods

exist, where you

                 believe in love’s

enduring kindness,

                 and in a decency

greater than mere

                 gratitude, and

as these are kin

                 to reading a poem,

you are welcome

                 here, the key is

under the mat

                 let yourself in

 

 

                          ––Fred Marchant

 

 

 

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

 

Celebrate April Poetry Month at the Newton Free Library Poetry Series

 

Red Letter Poem #152

 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 #152

 

 

 

 

It was discovered in 1896 by two tenant farmers who were double-plowing Joseph Gibson’s field – Broighter, near Limavady, County Derry.  At first they thought it a large clod or stone, but were surprised by the stickiness of the surface. They carried the black bundle home in their arms and washed it in a sink.  As the water splashed down, the gold gleamed through.

 

They’d unearthed a cache of gold artifacts from before the time of Christ: two chain necklaces, several decorated torcs, and this miniature gold boat marvelously fashioned, outfitted with oars and rudder, mast and yardarm, bench and spear.  Along with the Book of Kells and the Tara Brooch, the Broighter Hoard is considered one of Ireland’s proudest treasures.

 

Ireland’s at last – but England’s first, as the landlord sold the objects to the British Museum for the princely sum of 600£.  It took seven years of wrangling in the courts to bring the archaeological find back to its homeland, the case hanging mainly on a technicality: the imagined reason the items were committed to the earth.  In a legal oddity, if the burial was votive in nature – a gift to the Celtic gods – then it was an archeological find and the British Crown could demand possession.  But if it was instead a treasure trove, intended to be unearthed after a time, then this was a private possession, and Ireland’s claim would prevail.  The latter argument won the day – even though the Irish eventually admitted the gold might indeed have been an offering to the sea-god Manannan mac Lir, the waters of Lough Foyle shimmering close by.

 

My wife and I saw the gold boat during our first visit to Ireland, nearly forty years ago, and the memory of it remained with me.  It resembled a sea-going currach, a traditional Irish wood-framed, skin-covered fishing craft.  A little over seven inches in length, it was the perfect dream-vessel: an exquisite representation of what is, which compels the imagination to envision what might be just out of reach.  And isn’t this precisely what every artist aspires to: some image, gesture, rhythm, word which permits the maker (and invites the viewer) to step, with keen delight, inside the breathing present – and to sense, however briefly, something more.

 

*     *     *     *     *

Today is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day – and the holiday prompted me to share today’s poem.  But, if you’ll permit me, a few additional thoughts came to mind.  One concerns the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney who I was fortunate enough to interview, photograph, and then correspond with until his death in 2013.  The conversation was part of my poetry interview series – a project which eventually became the collection Giving Their Word (University of Massachusetts Press.)  I went to purchase what was then his brand-new collection – Seeing Things – and there it was again: the gold boat, in all its glory, gracing the cover.  It felt like a good omen.  Seamus’ greatness was not only as a poet but as a human being (and it seems everyone who knew him takes pleasure in affirming this.)  Could one ask for a better legacy?  Which makes me think of a second individual: Brian O’Donovan – broadcaster, writer, concert presenter – whose Celtic Sojourn program on WGBH Public Radio features the best of (as Brian likes to phrase it) the roots and branches of music from across the Celtic world.  I can think of few cultural ambassadors who have had as far-reaching an effect as Brian.  I’ve listened to his programs for decades and been educated by his musical curation and on-air essays (my favorite being one he did on the poetry of Seamus Heaney.)  Brian received a rather terrible health diagnosis this year but has continued to speak publicly and eloquently about the importance of living/savoring each given day.  I try to take his message to heart.  Both of these gentlemen helped me to realize how that something more I spoke of is always more precious and closer-at-hand than we’d imagined.  

 

 

 

Gold Boat

 

            The Broighter Hoard; County Derry

 

 

Hull, a hand’s length of beaten gold.

Gold straw for mast and spar and,

both port and starboard, nine bright twigs

for oars.  The artist’s burnished craft –

 

unearthed by a plow blade near Limavady, 

after twenty-one centuries becalmed.  Time

might easily have crushed it for good – and yet. . .  

Tonight, the moon’s a currach, cupped

 

like my father’s palm.  Memory in its hold.

A word-hoard massed like stars.    

Our vessel, large enough to carry a single

warm breath across the tideless dark –

 

yet small enough to ferry

all the names of the dead from

the providence of our saying

to the perdition of the said.

 

 

                 ––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

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