Red Letter Poem #191

 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 #191

 

 

 

 

 

Practicing the 12-Bar Blues

 

to my father

 

 

Raised black and flat whites.

 

Left hand arpeggio, pinky to root;

third and fifth pressed with middle and ring;

 

thumb at six, counterpoint

on the right for improvised melodic licks—

 

yes, it’s all coming back.

 

Minor verse, major chorus, the honkytonk

rhythms shuffle, toe-tappable riffs,

 

deep as fingerbones

know, beyond knowing—

 

separation takes practice.             

 

Loose knuckles stretch the octave.

Tension.  Release.

 

How do hands hold such memory?

 

The groove returns: backbeat pocket,

my piano hands two planets orbiting

 

free of each other.  I remember

how I unlearned unison,

 

how it’s not all that hard,

and I’m sorry forgetting you feels this good.

 

 

                         ––Sarah Anne Stinnett

 

 

 

I don’t believe her––the voice of the protagonist in Sarah Anne Stinnett’s new poem.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she’s lying or inauthentic (far from it); nor is she an example of the fiction writer’s tool, the unreliable narrator, whose perspective is intentionally skewed.  No, Sarah Anne’s poem comes across as matter-of-fact, carefully observed, and quietly confessional––as if there’s little space between the speaker and the poet bringing her to the page.  But there is a gap and––in the act of reaching out in the dark, for self-knowledge, for control over grief’s always-threatening tidal wave––that’s where the emotional crescendo of the poem is most keenly experienced.  So let’s (as bandleaders like to say) take it from the top.

 

I’ll start with the dedication–– to my father, not the more customary for.  And so we are clued in that this may be what’s called a ‘poem of address’, language supposedly offered to one particular pair of eyes and ears.  It’s as if we readers were (continuing the metaphor) overhearing this music drifting up from a downstairs neighbor.  Quickly, we come to trust the authority of this speaker; she’s certainly put in the time seated at that piano.  And as she reacquaints herself with the instrument, we almost feel our hands atop hers, picking out the riff: “thumb at six, counterpoint/ on the right for improvised melodic licks––// yes, it’s all coming back.”  Listen to that succession of short i vowels cushioning the intervals between the hammering of percussive k-sound consonants.  How can we help but begin imagining the jangly blues she’s practicing?  Slowly, we too come to “know, beyond knowing” that loss must be learned over time like a new and heartbreaking song––that indeed “separation takes practice.”  And as the two hands across the keyboard learn to move independently, the speaker must develop that same life-skill if the love she’s carrying inside is to sustain rather than undermine her performance.  You won’t be surprised to learn that, before his passing, Sarah Anne’s father was a jazz musician and musicologist who taught at the famed Berklee College of Music for over three decades (where the poet herself studied the electric bass.)  “The language of music,” she told me, “was a prominent part of my upbringing and something that binds my family together.”  Though the poem has not confided such detail to us, don’t you imagine her father as her mentor and collaborator––the music of their duets now enduring within this solo performance?

 

Sarah Anne, I must say, is quite accomplished for someone so young.  Taking a multidisciplinary approach, she completed her undergraduate work in the humanities and recently received two Masters degrees: one in Dramatic Arts (from Harvard Extension), and her MFA in poetry from Lesley University.  Presently she teaches a variety of classes in business communications, theater, and poetry through Berklee; and she’s developed a course on “the oral interpretation of literary works” at Lesley, among other educational projects.  Because she was one of the winners of the Cambridge Sidewalk Poetry Contest, one of her poems is incised in concrete at the crossing of Walden and Raymond Streets.  She is currently working to complete her first collection of poetry, and today’s piece is among an extensive group of elegies to her father.  I lost my own father when I was a child––and while, of course, we all bring our personal history to bear when delving into a poem, being part of this wounded brother/sisterhood raises the bar when reading about loss.  I was moved by this poem’s quiet awareness of how the world is both continuous, unchanged––and, at the same time, dramatically reshaped by the death of a parent.  In the closing lines––and with something of an apology to her father for a life that goes on without him––the speaker celebrates the balm of forgetting.  True––but at the very same moment, and a hairsbreadth above her, the poet is engraving remembrance in the lyric of this poem.  In this contradiction, I hear grief’s refrain cycling around––the blues of a conscious mind.  And that I believe utterly.

 

 

 

 

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