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 #157
Moon Light
Bless her who blessed us with
this gift, this bauble, pharos-
paraphrase of Earth’s,
our satellight, a bubble
to make your room a fable
of seeing through the night.
This 3-D-printed globe,
crater by crater true,
minutely rough—as is,
no doubt, the original
to the soft hand of God—
hankers to show us us.
Who knew it was so light?
—that clinker in the sky,
to rest its ounces on
a wireframe cube of basswood.
Who knew it had a button
to switch from gold to rare
blue, and dim it too?
We said this afternoon,
looking ahead to night,
Last up turns out the Moon!
––Charles O. Hartman
Fearing that I might rob you, dear reader, of even a bit of the pleasure contained in today’s offering, I decided to flip the order and present my comments after you’ve read the poem. “Moon Light” comes from Downfall of the Straight Line, a new manuscript upon which Charles Hartman is just putting the finishing touches. But since there will necessarily be a lag before you and I can enjoy this, his eighth poetry collection, I’ve found myself going back to his always-intriguing New & Selected Poems (Ahsahta Press, at Boise State University.) There are abundant pleasures in his complex and spirited approach – but his work raises a question in my mind: how do we learn to sit with poems that may defy easy interpretation or that require our minds to race as nimbly as their creators through interwoven thoughts? This much is certain: the course between a poet’s heart and the world is, indeed, rarely a straight line.
This reminded me of something I heard recently on the NPR program Radiolab. They were devoting their hour to The Universe in Verse which is, by its own description, “an annual charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry.” How marvelous to discover that thousands flock each year to their in-person events, or to their website to savor animated poems combined with original music. Such things represent the triumph of curiosity and delight in an age when science and deep knowing have become suspect in some quarters. But during their introductions, Radiolab co-host Latif Nasser was honest enough to confess his fear about poetry: that perhaps he just won’t “get it.” He is not alone. For many – especially those whose introduction to verse came in a classroom with a less-than-sympathetic instructor – poetry was sometimes used as an assessment device to measure reading comprehension and intellectual dexterity. Some of my own teachers seemed to believe that poets were simply syntax technicians creating elaborate coded tracts to defy comprehension by the average reader. But the work of poets like Charles seems to underscore Robert Frost’s famous formulation that poetry “begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” He – like any fully-empowered child – is more often engaged in a kind of serious play, granting his mind tremendous latitude to reach into unfolding experience and find new ways to grasp what the universe is offering.
Let’s begin with the quiet surprise in the title: not the moonlight we might expect, but a moon(-shaped) (night)light – a gift from one loving friend to a new couple. And is it the light itself or her love-token that reminds the speaker of that ancient lighthouse in Pharos guiding sailors homeward? The home (and the mind) certainly does become a ‘fabled’ place within the procession of these luminous couplets. When you hear the deft and unexpected music within his lines, it will come as little surprise that Charles is also a jazz guitarist. Reading “pharos/-paraphrase” aloud; or catching the echo between “bauble”, “bubble” and “fable” – it’s hard not to feel these sounds delighting the tongue and ear. And when he contemplates “the soft hand of God” that “hankers to show us us”, that last bit of reverb pulses out into the atmosphere like a signal beacon. When, on even the most glorious days, the poet must look “ahead to night”, I’m imagining a happy couple anticipating their warm bed – yet I cannot help but detect a bit of uncertainty in that minor chord, recalling the encompassing ‘night’ we’re all journeying toward. Again, my heart lifts with his playful enjoinder: “Last up turns out the Moon!” but I’m mindful of that faint overtone of apocalyptic anxiety, picturing our universe quietly extinguished. Despite what your eighth grade teacher may have implied, there is no one way to 'get' the fullness at the heart of a poem’s unfolding – but there is a more resonant awareness that grows, the precursor of Frost’s wisdom. Reading “Moon Light”, I find my mind climbing those same stairs, grateful that my own beloved is close at hand. And perhaps it’s only human that I’ve the urge to add an addendum to the poem: “…and may the first one down in the morning remember to switch on the sun.”
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
