Red Letter Poem #219

 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 #219

 

 

 

Whirlpool

On sale at Sozio’s, just off Revere

Beach. And with it came the bottomless foam

It seems to have channeled. All that high-speed chugging



And churning that shook the ceiling until it was clear,

At least to us downstairs, our uncle should heed

My father’s anxious warning about a flood



And put the thing in the basement—where it belonged.

He said it in Greek, and he was adamant.

But there were too many steps for my aunt to be lugging



Laundry up and down our double decker…

That brand-new Whirlpool. And all that old-world doom

And immigrant gloom I heard when he vent the pent:



“The hose will let go! These ceilings are only plaster!”

Not exactly Cassandra, foreseeing the palace walls

Awash with royal blood. But maybe my father



Was on to something… Just saying Sozio,

The Sixties are underway. And there they go,

Shades of my aunt and my mother, rushing for towels.


--- ––George Kalogeris



Considering that America is, for the most part, a nation of immigrants, it astonishes me how easily and adamantly certain citizens want to demonize the very notion of ‘strangers making their way to our shores,’ dismissing out of hand any of the forces that might be propelling them. Sometimes, these migrants are steering toward a better life for their families; other times, they’re desperately veering away from an old life that has become wholly untenable. It strikes me as an irrational impulse (a vestige of our long tribal past) to furiously deny the very welcome to newcomers that we, or our forebears, hungered for so mightily at the time of our arrival. Along with many other nationalities, there was a large influx of Greeks to the U.S. after the brutality of Nazi occupation during the Second World War. That’s when George Kalogeris’s father and his brothers came to coastal Winthrop, north of Massachusetts. As a poet, George has celebrated that Greek community (and the idea of communality itself) in four dynamic poetry collections, the most recent being Winthropos, (Louisiana State University)––the title being a Hellenized name for his hometown. George is the quintessential humanist––poet, scholar, educator, and translator––and when he last appeared in the Letters he was an Associate Professor at Suffolk University and Director of their Poetry Center. But he has recently retired, which is certainly a loss for the university but a blessing, I’m sure, for those of us who take sustenance from his poetry. As we anxiously await his next collection, I am happy I can bring new work to Red Letter readers.



Among many strong poetic qualities, I think George’s strongest is his ear. That term usually refers to a poet’s sense of diction and musicality––and, indeed, it’s a nuanced skill evidenced throughout his work. (You probably felt the internal rhyme and the quiet pulsing of his iambic cadences operating within this poem, bolstering the colloquial.) But I find other dimensions at work in George’s writing: the uncanny way he hears echoes of historical narratives and the most ancient of Greek mythologies at play in the simple features of his family’s daily life. When his uncle seizes upon one modest element of the American dream––in this case, a Whirlpool clothes washer to ease his wife’s labors (a bargain, no less, at the local discount store)––comic possibilities quickly emerge. But George’s antenna sensed that there was more at stake here, and deeper meanings folded into that brand name. Yes, his father is worrying about a leak bringing down their brittle plaster ceiling; but this family has already witnessed first-hand the tumultuous whirlpool of history, capable of carrying its political brutality even high into the small villages of the Peloponnese. Having come to the United States to be free of such turbulence, they now find the Sixties beginning to erupt around them––the horrors of political assassination, and a divisive war threatening to snatch up the young men in its net (with George himself as a possible victim.) The simple mention of Cassandra reminds us of the suffering brought on by myopic kings and petulant gods. Will those towels the women rush for soon be drenched with soapy water or something far worse?



Ultimately, we are all engaged in a continuous exploration––beginning immediately with our bawling arrival into this existence––to discover a sense of home, to find the place (or places) where our hearts feel inclined to take root. In his poem “Ithaka.” C. P. Cavafy––often called the greatest Greek poet of the 20th century––points to the distinction between home and the journey to get there.



“Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island…”



All this leaves me thinking: doesn’t every individual born on this planet deserve at least this––not simply a roof above their heads, but the requisite freedom to keep mind and spirit venturing toward that dream of a homeland? Especially here in America, where there is such abundance, is it really so radical an idea that we can afford to care for more than our own––perhaps to continue making them our own, as has been our tradition? No matter which side of the ocean that Ithaka is found, whether in the Old World or the New, can’t a welcome be extended and a chance to live at peace? Traveling such a path, Cavafy reminds us, “then you will have learned what [all those] Ithakas mean.”

 

 

 

 

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:

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* 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