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 #215
On the Road to Lviv
When Zagajewski read at Vilenica,
In the courtyard of a medieval castle
That fell to ruin long ago, to the poets
Seated beneath a chestnut tree, which rained
Ripe chestnuts on their heads at intervals
No one could time, their attention may have wandered,
For they kept looking up, as if in prayer,
Since poetry is prayer. This festival
In the Karst region of Slovenia
Brought kindred spirits from around the world
To revel in the word made manifest,
Here in the courtyard and later in a cave
The organizers called their tectonic cathedral.
Say amen to the poets, then, who savor
A blaze of words under the chestnut tree.
––Christopher Merrill
To leave
in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September
or in March. But only if Lvov exists,
if it is to be found within the frontiers and not just
in my new passport. . .
––Adam Zagajewski
“To Go to Lvov”
Christopher Merrill has been speaking to people who aren’t there. Of course, this seems to be something of an occupational hazard for poets. After all one could argue that, in some cases, the self which composes a poem and the one who, later on, stops to make coffee are, at best, distant relatives. And, of course, there’s always some imagined readership whose eyes might someday interact with the written text. But, in Christopher’s case, his poems have, as part of their very conception, a broader invisible audience––and this is especially true for his recently-published On the Road to Lviv (Arrowsmith Press.) It’s a book-length poem, written in short sections, depicting his deepening connection with the people and culture of Ukraine. It evolved over time, beginning during a trip to that country in 2006; continuing with a visit after the Maidan Revolution ousted their corrupt president; and culminating with the 2022 start of the Russian invasion. He has undertaken these often-hazardous journeys because––in addition to being an acclaimed poet, essayist, journalist, and translator––he’s currently the director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. A cultural diplomat, he began recording his impressions of that beleaguered nation, and soon found himself in conversation with the much-loved Polish writer Adam Zagajewski––even though he died one year prior. As Christopher slowly made his way toward Lviv, how could he not think of what is perhaps Zagajewski’s most famous poem, “To Go to Lvov”–– the city of that poet’s birth, and one that’s changed hands numerous times over the years, from Polish to Soviet to Ukrainian (the old ‘Lvov’ spelling reflecting the Russian influence.) Zagajewski’s was a dream-pilgrimage to a city where his soul resides; Christopher Merrill’s was a nightmarish odyssey through the ruins of history.
I love how the poet’s diction is constantly shifting throughout the verses; one moment he is reporting, with journalistic exactitude, the way a Russian thermobaric bomb “is capable/ Of vaporizing bodies,” and how it “Explodes in a bright flash that sucks the air/ Up from the ground and out of human lungs.” And the next, his speech is that of a political scientist, describing the theater bombing in Mariupol where “at least 600 citizens were killed/ That day in March in what investigators/ Concluded was not only the most heinous/ War crime in the first month of the invasion/ But the most visible in modern warfare.” But before we can even catch our breath, his utterance shifts, becoming that of the broken-hearted poet who zeroes in on just the precise image, just the critical detail to shake readers’ hearts as well:
For a set designer had inscribed the word
CHILDREN in white paint on the pavement outside
The entrances in front and back, in Cyrillic
Letters large enough for satellites
To register, and journalists to broadcast
Around the world, and Russian pilots to read
Before they followed their orders. Bombs away.
Christopher’s collection Watch Fire earned him the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. His writing since has been translated into nearly forty languages; and among his many honors are a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial and Ingram Merrill Foundations. In April of 2012, he was appointed to the National Council on the Humanities by President Barack Obama. Reading On the Road to Lviv, and seeing the facing-page translations into Ukrainian, it becomes plain that his new book is also intended to speak––not for, but to––the people of that country, both the brutalized survivors and the all-too-silent dead. Christopher is attempting to stand as a witness to that suffering, to make sure that politicians never attempt to take refuge behind the deceitful shield: we didn’t know. In her landmark anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, Carolyn Forché writes of that earlier time: “These poems will not permit us diseased complacency. They come to us with claims that have yet to be filled, as attempts to mark us as they have themselves been marked.” Certainly, there are children being born into the 21st century for whom names like Mariupol and Kharkiv and Lviv will not be coupled with the sting of tears. This poet is speaking to them as well.
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
