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 #232
La Liseuse
—Paris, 1878
This is the year the Eurydice sinks
and the SS Byzantin. Here,
the World’s Fair has opened,
while back home the Senate debates
women’s suffrage as the First Lady
smiles and rolls pink and yellow-
striped Easter eggs across the lush
White House lawns. Cassatt
does not show us the headlines,
and we cannot tell from Lydia’s
soft profile which stories she reads
or what she thinks of them,
or that at forty-one she’s just four years
from her death, Bright’s disease
already ravaging her kidneys,
though neither she nor her not-yet
famous sister knows this. They believe
whatever ails her—the doctors
disagree—is in remission now,
and so together with Mary she tours
the boulevards and galleries,
attends the right plays and salons—
though she knows Mary brings her
mostly as chaperone, to quiet
the gossips, and that she uses her,
as a free model and housekeeper. It’s Lydy
who shops and sews, keeps the accounts,
stays the loneliness her sister
battles. Did she long for a husband
and children? A lover? An art of her
own? Nothing survives of her letters,
and little is said of her in Mary’s,
except reports of her devotion
and the family’s praise. Angel
in the house, she’s forever silent, her sister’s
Reader, her Woman, Crocheting.
––Susan Aizenberg
The painter Mary Cassatt was a bundle of contradictions: the first great American Impressionist, she spent the majority of her creative life as an expatriate in France; famous for her realistic depictions of motherhood and domesticity, in her own life she eschewed both in order to pursue her artistic career. And, as a fierce advocate for suffrage and women's rights, it seems Mary (as poet Susan Aizenberg depicts in today’s bittersweet poem) may have allowed another woman’s needs to go unfulfilled, simply in service of her own (a failing often attributed to men.) Susan centers our attention on Lydia Cassatt, Mary’s elder sister, who accompanied her to Europe as companion, housekeeper, unpaid model, deflector of gossip. And though we are familiar with her appearance from a number of well-known canvases, far less is known of the woman––especially her inner life and aspirations. It seems she was content to spend her days in service of the creative genius she saw in her sister––an avocation often called ‘kinship work’ by anthropologists––or, in a phrase featured in a famous poem of the day, "the angel in the house." In today’s perspective, it likely seems an act that is both selfless and self-negating.
In any skillfully-executed composition, no daub of color, no background detail is presented unless it serves the overall aim of the canvas. The same is true for a fine poem, and Susan begins hers with two little details intended (one might guess) simply to help indicate the 19th century time frame. “This is the year the Eurydice sinks/ and the SS Byzantin.” Of course, the roster of shipwrecks in 1878 is extensive; so Susan’s choices hint at a range of cultural markers: the mythological Eurydice, forced into the Underworld to become Hades’ bride; and the fall of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, and with it the intricate and arcane styles that were its hallmark. In contrast, the Impressionists would attempt to make viewers experience the simple beauty of everyday life and the extraordinary marvel of that is our perception of light. In a series of paintings, we eavesdrop on Lydia’s immersion in activities as varied as concert-going, crocheting, or (as in “La Liseuse,”) the petit solitude involved in reading the morning newspaper. Of course, all of these underscore their primary purpose: to sit patiently as her younger sibling worked at the easel. Lydia left behind no letters or diary entries which might help us understand her feelings––so it takes a poet’s imagination to consider whether this was rewarding or frustrating or something beyond simple comprehension.
Susan, Professor Emerita of Creative Writing and English at Creighton University, is the author of three poetry collections––the first of which, Muse, was awarded Virginia Commonwealth University’s Larry Levis Prize, and the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. She’s the co-editor (with Erin Belieu) of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (Columbia University Press.) Today’s poem is taken from her recently-published A Walk with Frank O’Hara and Other Poems (University of New Mexico Press.) I am always intrigued by the varied subject matter, tonal shifts, and surprising emotional navigation captured in her work. If both heart and mind remain alert (her poems seem to be telling us,) perhaps we can avoid the pitfalls of the habitual. Susan’s portrait here––not of the ‘famous sister,’ but the largely-unheralded companion––allows us to experience her mortal jeopardy as akin to our own. Lydia Cassatt is not unique in the sacrifices love demands of family members. By the close of this poem, I found myself both angry at a world that forces such choices on individuals, especially women––but also frustrated with Lydia herself for not demanding more of life before illness would cut hers short. And yet I also marveled at the generosity of spirit required to make such a ‘gift’ to someone so dear. I don’t know if that quality comes naturally to me––yet it’s one I experienced in two of my sisters, and to which I quietly aspire. So I’m thankful to recognize that Lydia’s simple pleasures, perhaps, provided more contentment than I often recognize. It seems I may be carrying my own tangle of contradictions as well.
Red Letters 3.0
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http://dougholder.blogspot.com
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