Red Letter Poem #192

  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 #192

 

 

 Career

Some days, I want to withdraw my submission to the world,

and write a note that says Sorry, but I’ve been taken elsewhere.

But where? Three hundred million potentially habitable planets,

according to the latest NASA research, and not one of them

within reach.

Here, on earth, my left hand rests in sunlight and

my right hand rests in shade. These stained New England granites,

lying in their fencerows since the golden years of the Enlightenment,

make good places to sit and watch the ecosystem collapse.

Which it does, but very slowly, like crown glass flowing in a windowpane,

or in staccato bursts, like hydrocarbon fire.

The oxidizing rivers,

the dried-up streams, the dream of an eternal Arden blown

like milkweed silk that settles on the mirror of an algaed lake,

the sun reclining in its bowl of beaten gold—so beautiful,

these end-of-the-millennium days. I think of Newark seen in passing

from the interstate, when sunlight floods the scalped terrain

adjacent to the marshlands, smearing all the factories with titian,

verdigris, and rose.

Suppose I dug a hole and sowed my poem,

deep in an alluvium of peat and ash, and someone in the aftertime

unearthed it, legible despite the stains and degradation, and read it,

if they could. That reader—dark, intelligent, a little smaller than a human,

clad in homemade boots and a range coat made of tawny leather—

might recognize how much I loved the world, although the language

might have sounded strange, and how some days I carried hope

in my mouth like a small gray stone, and how some days

I could hardly stand it, how the world had changed,

and how despite it all I never gave in. This is that person’s poem.

I submit it to them.

 

 

                         ––Jonathan Weinert

 

 

For years, I had a favorite New Yorker cartoon pinned beside my writing desk.  Sadly, dear reader, I may have to spoil the punchline with explanation since, I fear, only older writers will even remember the subject matter being portrayed.  In ancient days, before services like Submittable were established (through which most current magazines electronically receive writers’ literary offerings), we’d have to manually reproduce our poems and stories by pounding with fingertips on devices called typewriters (perhaps you’ve seen them in old movies.)  Then we’d neatly fold the printed pages into envelopes, remembering to squeeze in an additional ‘self-addressed stamped envelope’ so that a rejected manuscript could be returned.  And when that SASE showed up in the mailbox (sadly far too often), usually the only communication from the magazine was a printed form letter or card, usually with the same annoyingly-disingenuous apology.  Now, picture this: in the cartoon, a writer’s wall is plastered with a hundred notes of various shapes and sizes––with one small vacant spot in the center.  Prominent on his desk is a full-sized newly-received letter whose stationery logo resembles that of the New Yorker itself.  The poet (as I like to imagine him) is busy typing out his response: “Dear Editor, Regretfully, I have to return your recent rejection slip.  It does not meet our current needs.”

The cartoon produced a rueful laugh, our shared desperation turned to levity.  Jonathan Weinert’s new poem cheekily relies on a more current bit of jargon: when, in this age of mass electronic submissions, your poem is miraculously accepted by one journal, the power dynamic is quietly reversed.  You are now obligated to write to all the other magazines, letting those benighted editors know: sorry, your magazine could have relished my recent masterpiece, but you’re too late.  Except, in this case, Jonathan seems to be withdrawing––not simply a poem––but the contribution of his whole being to this failed human endeavor.  Questions abound: is this poet resting in some Colonial churchyard, gazing at the New England landscape?  Is he living still or a tremulous shadow?  Did you thrill, as I did, to his vivid descriptions of a once-unsullied world?  Did you begin to feel a little unmoored in time, our Edenic past and devastating present interwoven?  “Suppose I dug a hole and sowed my poem,” the speaker proposes, mired in his quiet Thoreauvian desperation––and now an imagined future-world enters the picture.  And what would some being from the “aftertime” make of our angst (poetic and otherwise)?  How painful, to look back to a time when a shift in our behavior might have saved the planet––yet we remained (blindly or selfishly) unchanged? 

Jonathan is hardly alone in his despair nor in his appeal to some future listener, likely confounded by our choices.  I immediately thought of Jane Hirshfield’s marvelous poem “Let Them Not Say” which became something of an international Green anthem: “Let them not say: we did not see it./ We saw. . ./ Let them not say: they did nothing./ We did not-enough.”  Jonathan––let me hurry to say–– is the author of three fine poetry collections.  A Slow Green Sleep was the winner of Saturnalia Books’ Editors Prize; and In the Mode of Disappearance was awarded the Nightboat Poetry Prize.  He is also the co-editor of Until Everything Is Continuous Again: American Poets on the Recent Work of W. S. Merwin, celebrating that masterly American visionary.   But fearing the insufficiency of his efforts, the speaker here is in danger of submitting to the overwhelming forces (and don’t those double entendres like ‘withdraw’ and ‘submit’ attain a marvelous resonance!)  He offers his heart instead to those who may follow our failed efforts, still clinging to the wounded Earth.  This poem is, by his own admission, far more discursive than his customary style, arising perhaps from his frustration; but he’s leavened the pain with a dash of humor and a still-flickering hope.  So, for this occasion, I’ve dusted off my old Smith Corona: “Dear Mr. Weinert, I am writing on behalf of Red Letter readers.  It is without regret that I must reject the interment of your poetry.  We find it bracing and beautiful and absolutely necessary.  If we are to have any chance of survival, we need honest voices that remind us of our humanity, of our stewardship of this green world.  Your poem, most assuredly, meets our current needs.”

 

 

 

 

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