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 #210
The Gap
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies...
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific...
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
––John Keats
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
She grabbed her six-year-old daughter and ran.
She’d heard the USA would let them in––
a new rule; some special dispensation––
safe harbor, for hapless Venezuelans.
Smugglers herded them across rough mountains;
thick, sucking jungle mud. A hostile land,
impenetrable Gap of Darien,
which engineers had tried––but failed––to span.
Separated for days, in abject fear––
mother and child, reunited at last.
They stumbled, but made it to Honduras,
where other migrants gathered. It was here
they learned the news that US heads of state
had made sanctuary evaporate.
––Denise Provost
The subject at hand is complex. What I’m about to do is far less so: I am making simple declarative statements, enumerating facts, raising questions. I do not pretend to possess certainty; in truth, even clarity eludes me. Strange enough, something as ambiguous as a poem can often provide the impetus for carving a new path through the emotional thicket, confronting our own conflicted opinions. I am talking about the calamity of migrants massing at our borders, especially the fate of refugees fleeing from wars and disasters. Clearly, this is one of the most divisive hot-button issues roiling the upcoming Presidential contest. At the same time, I am thinking about the moral character of a people, as embodied by their laws and the officers charged with enforcing them.
Denise Provost’s new poem, “The Gap”, is what’s compelled me into this troubling place of self-examination. Though it is written in the form of a sonnet––with all the artistry and complex history that calls to mind––it is a fairly straightforward piece of verse. It conjures the presence of an unnamed migrant mother fleeing the political and economic upheaval of her homeland. The woman has a young daughter she wants desperately to protect. If she is to find safe harbor in the North, she needs to traverse a nearly impassable 60-mile swath of mountainous jungle known as the Darien Gap––so treacherous a territory, it is the lone break in the 18,600-mile Pan-American Highway. Her journey has been inspired by a burst of clarity in the often-tangled history of immigration law. Word had spread of a new American policy aimed specifically at the situation in Venezuela. Simply by adding a brief epigraph, the poet has allowed us to liken this woman’s imaginative urgency to that of Keats, expressed in his 1816 sonnet––where Chapman’s luminous translation grants the poet sudden passage into the ancient world of Homer. There are odysseys implied in both sonnets––geographical, metaphorical, emotional. All this is clear. But then what? Republicans will rail against ‘open borders’ saying the first duty of every nation is to safeguard its citizens––but too often come across as lacking in humanity. The Democrats will speak of the legal and humanitarian responsibilities for responding to any refugee crisis––but then they will quake at the political and economic consequences. Simple statements. Here is another: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that, in 2024, there are 130 million individuals forcibly displaced by wars, famine, political collapse, environmental disaster. Statistics do not convey the precarious situation of the human body and mind; poems often do. Again, I ask: now what? International maritime law demands that, when a vessel is sinking, any nearby ship must do everything possible to rescue survivors. What must we do––legally, ethically––when it is a ship of state foundering in the storm?
Denise is a poet, lawyer, and former Massachusetts State Representative. Her chapbook Curious Peach was published by Ibbetson Street Press, followed by a full-length collection, City of Stories, from Cervena Barva. She was awarded the Samuel Washington Allen Prize in 2021 from the New England Poetry Club––perhaps America’s oldest literary association––and was elected its co-president the following year. Today’s Letter is from a manuscript-in-progress with the alluring working title, Box Marked 'Other'. With it, Denise has attempted to lay claim, momentarily, to our hearts and imaginations. She has affirmed the power of articulation as a primary human impulse, fortifying our need to understand. She has made an appeal to the ear and its intuitive emotional resources––while the conscious intellect is still hurrying to catch up. Indeed, the poet has ably demonstrated the comfort that we find in form, orderliness, and the lovely chiming of spoken syllables (though the situation being described offers anything but.) As I claimed at the outset: what I am doing here is easy. What Denise has done––artful, restrained, while still challenging the conscience––is more arduous. What you will do now in response––harder still.
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
