Red Letter Poem #226
Tango
My wristband tight as a tourniquet,
my reptile skin windswept, dry as dust.
My glasses fogged by someone else’s breath.
My passport in a pocket where my hand
should go but won’t for fear of change.
The song a tango from below the border
that divides us, keeps us at arm’s length,
line drawn in sand that blows in our eyes.
––Wyn Cooper
Mary Oliver was once asked by a reader what a certain poem ‘was about’––and her answer came quickly: “commas.” She explained to me sometime later that she was not being flippant––the poem in question became, during the long revision process, a marvelous experiment in the use of commas for spacing, bundling thought, regulating breath. This memory came to mind because, if someone asked me what Wyn Cooper’s new Red Letter poem “Tango” was about, I’d be tempted to respond: T’s. Just listen to the spree of those hard consonants––seven in the first two lines!––like the rhythmic clacking of the claves as a Latin band swings into gear. In a poem named after a South American dance, it should not be surprising that the poet would have an inner soundtrack propelling the language.
But widening my purview, I find myself fascinated by a quality in many of Wyn’s poems: they feel like mini-cinemas in which we readers have arrived in our seats sometime after the first reel. We are quickly trying to catch up, fill in the narrative, speculate about the protagonist and where the movie is leading us. In the case of “Tango”, the film feels a little noir-ish, what with that “reptile skin,” fogged-over glasses, and “someone else’s breath” so close and intimate we’re feeling both aroused and exposed. But when the speaker mentions “below the border/ that divides us,” a soupçon of political intrigue enters the picture. As we approach what is surely one of the most divisive elections in American history, the very word border is fraught; and who and what we permit to cross our boundaries––let alone into our hearts and minds––becomes a matter of greater consequence. When I was young, I always loved how characters like those Humphrey Bogart often played––rugged individualists who could somehow feel enamored by and completely at ease in many cultures and locales––made me imagine a world without all those “line(s) drawn in sand” intended to separate peoples––blown sand, Wyn points out, that ultimately serve only to blind us. In those films, the dignity and imaginative freedom every character craved pointed toward a commonality I’d not heard spoken of in my public education. The very notion of a world with flexible borders and intermingling ideas seems painfully naïve these days. But elusive things like music, poetry, dreams still somehow find a way to subvert governments, slip past checkpoints, and bring us their stories, their truths.
Wyn is the author of five collections of poetry––the most recent being Mars Poetica (White Pine Press)––and the novel Way Out West (Concord Free Press.) His poems, stories, essays, and reviews––in accordance with today’s poem––have had their passports stamped by scores of publications such as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, AGNI, and more. He is also the co-creator of two fascinating recordings featuring the voice of the novelist Madison Smartt Bell. And speaking of crossing boundaries: his poem “Fun” was the basis for the Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow. It pleases me to think of contemporary poetry, in all its complexity, making its way into so many unsuspecting ears. When our dance partner is graceful, inventive, quietly assured, how can we help but be swept away?
Red Letters 3.0
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