Red Letter Poem #237

 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 #237

 

 

 

One-Liners

Henny Youngman, a nightclub and TV star from the golden age of comedy, was known as the ‘King of the One-Liners.’ Paring the set-ups for his gags down to the bare minimum, he could often provoke audiences into a wry smirk or a hearty guffaw with a single sentence. Here’s his most famous joke––a line that is so well-known, it’s spawned a thousand comic spinoffs: "Take my wife––please!" It’s all in the timing: he leads us in one direction before pulling the rug out from under our expectations. Poetry, too, has a long tradition of one-liners, the shortest of short-form verses. Its ancestry leads us back to the Japanese haiku which, traditionally, was a one-line poem, a quiet waterfall of calligraphic characters descending the rice paper scroll. If necessary, some characters might spill onto a second column––but the reader would not view this as a separate line. So why are we, in the West, so accustomed to translating these pithy poems into three separate pieces? Kireji, or ‘cut-words’, are syllables at the close of a phrase that add emphasis, shift context or focus, catch one’s breath. We have no equivalent in English and so the use of line-breaks to form three sections probably felt most appropriate. Some classic haiku in English would still work well in their original one-line format. Take this little gem from Issa:

Distant mountains reflected in the eye of the dragonfly



Little is lost without our tripart structure––and the sense of a vastness embodied in so diminutive a lens still conjures quite a dramatic image. Influenced by these masters of brevity, there are many Western writers who have achieved similar intensities––writing less and relying more on the reader’s imagination to fulfill the moment. Here are a few of my favorites. Some American poets fudge the form a bit by including a title (a rarity in traditional Japanese haiku.) Here’s a playful piece from Philip Whalen:



Early Spring


The dog writes on the window with his nose.



What a wealth of information in so small a package––and I think every dog owner will affirm the truth of those smeared, urgent messages: Squirrels! Pigeons! I want out!



Yvor Winters conjures quite the metaphysical mood with his poem:



The Shadow’s Song:


I am beside you, now.


And who would have imagined so much grief contained in a mere six words?



Elegy


Who would I show it to



—W.S. Merwin



Humbly, I’ll contribute one of my own to this gathering, a long stream of words too long for the margins of this page, so you’ll have to imagine it running on into space beneath its unusual title:



@



Cloud@sky, eye@early moon, clutch of crows@neighbor’s pine, you beside me,

home@last.



––S.R.



But let me share three from another Arlington poet, someone for whom the haiku has become, not only a discipline, but a way of life. Brad Bennett both teaches the artform and spends his days perfecting his own prolific outpouring. He is the author of three collections of haiku:

a drop of pond; a turn in the river; and a box of feathers––all from Red Moon Press. By using minimal punctuation, we experience the words recombining before our very eyes, finding new ways to excite and interconnect neural bundles across the brain.



spring clouds I have yet to write



How shall we interpret these clouds? Are they the ones the poet is yet to invent––or are they like his teacher, gently chiding the poet for his estrangement from the notebook? And, briefer still, another:



pond still no punctuation



Wasn’t it a quiet delight to make and remake the potential meanings in this/these simple statement(s)? And a last one, the very shortest of the bunch––a three-word masterstroke:



birdsong every now



Sometimes, reading this, I’d find myself adding words, to fill out the phrase. Other times, I’m hearing spiritual master Meher Baba’s injunction to be here now (in this instance, guided by an avian guru.) By demanding that more be accomplished with less, a poet discovers how mercuric and surprising language can be, how far-reaching its sparks. I’ll circle back to Henny Youngman and offer another of his one-line delights: “When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” Just as our minds prepare to zig, the comedian jolts us with a zag––and the tickled neurons provoke laughter. Not so very different from what the greatest haiku-master Basho does in this one:



A cicada shell––it sang itself utterly away.



Best keep the mind awake and nimble: these fleeting lightning-strike poems demand that we elevate our game so we, too, might find the startling beauty in even a seemingly-simple utterance.

 

 

 

 

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 BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

Red Letter Poem #236

 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 #236

 

 

 

 

The Ledge



(for Alfie)


Woken again by nothing, with this line

already at my back, I thought of you

at twenty, as you are – which passed somehow

while I was staring – thought how yesterday

you said you wanted to be young again,

which left me with this nothing left to say

that’s woken me. You are, you are – what else

does father wail to child – though wailing it

he’s woken with six-sevenths of the night

to go – you are – look I will set to work

this very moment slowing time myself,

feet to the stone and shoulder to the dark

to gain you ground – if just one ledge of light

you flutter to, right now, rereading that.


––Glyn Maxwell

There is no imaginative stance, no literary conceit, no traditional prosody nor contemporary revamped approach to song that Glyn Maxwell isn’t more than willing to bring to bear––once some experience has gotten under his skin. I first met this poet some thirty-five years ago when he’d returned to read at Boston University (his alma mater, where he’d studied with Derek Walcott)––and, hearing his work then, my impression was that of an accomplished formalist born into an age when such artfulness was most definitely out of fashion. So he’d committed himself to devising ways to give free rein to a fierce intelligence and dazzling lyric ability, all the while dressing down in colloquial garb so that readers could approach without hesitation. But upon entering the poems, we’d quickly sense the subterranean depths echoing beneath the surface. He was innovative, mercurial, often darkly comic, always provocative. I’ve kept up with his work over the years, finding consistent pleasures in the new collections. I met him in-person again just recently when Arrowsmith Press was launching his New and Selected Poems; I’m happy to report that, if anything, he’s become a writer even more comfortable in his own skin, confident in his bonds to the tradition as well as his love of invention. He’s still offering poems that reward the head and heart in equal measure.



“The Ledge” is a loosely-rhymed sonnet about––well, a whole host of things I’d hesitate to pin down: a father fearing for the wellbeing of his son; a poet working toward some sort of clarity that might ease his own trepidation; even the implied promise a formal literary structure offers us (though uncertainty threatens to undermine all.) Look at that opening line: “Woken again by nothing”––and it becomes clear that the nothing referred to is both a ‘needless concern’ and, at the same time, the ultimate nothingness that terrifies us all. “(T)hought how yesterday/ you said you wanted to be young again,/ which left me with this nothing left to say/ that’s woken me.” Isn’t that every parent’s wish: to delay, as long as possible, our children’s experience of mortal limitation? And this leads us to yet another fearful nothing: the writer’s anxiety that words might fail him in his desire to speak honestly, shape meaning (for his son’s sake, or his own.) Still, what else can a poet do but sit up in the dark and bring the tentative pen to paper, hoping for the grace of inspiration. “You are, you are” (the narrator declares) far too young for such worries––though what else can a “father wail to child” (or, for that matter, to his own young self who first conceived the dream of poetry, let alone progeny.) And so the speaker sets “to work/ this very moment slowing time”––slowing it to the cadences of verse, to the green involutions of thought––so that he might offer the child (and the reader) some purchase on “one ledge of light.” That’s the sort of place where we fledglings might find a brief experience of peace––even if it only arrives via the “momentary stay against confusion” (borrowing Frost’s notion) that a poem may provide.



Born in Hertfordshire, England to Welsh parents, Glyn is a poet, playwright, critic, and educator, living the sort of literary life to which our world has grown increasingly inhospitable. A prolific writer, he’s published nearly a dozen volumes of poetry, and more than that number of theater pieces. He’s taught in universities like Princeton, Columbia, NYU, and is currently Head of Studies on the MA at The Poetry School at Somerset House in London. The former Poetry Editor of The New Republic, he is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The influences of Glyn’s poetic ancestry hover about his verse: in addition to Frost, there’s T. S. Eliot’s perspicacity and regard for tradition; Thomas’ (Dylan, of course, but a little of Edward as well) feel for the well-made song as the receptacle for both tenuous beauty and the fearsome unknown. And, throughout the collection, there’s the echo of a whole range of naturalists, from Wordsworth to Ted Hughes, each displaying their faith that the observed world will give rise to a specialized language, capable of conjuring as well what can only be imagined. Out on that ledge, Glyn is still at work on the task.

 

 

 

 

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 BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

Spirit Burns By Tina Jackson

HISTORY COMES TO LIFE IN THIS WONDERFULLY TOLD STORY


Full disclosure, I've been a fan of Tina Jackson since first reading her wonderful novel, The Beloved Children. That novel, like this one, brings history to life with characters so real, complex and interesting you find yourself compelled to keep reading to learn their full story.

Spirit Burns takes a rich and transformative moment in British history told from the point of view of the Suffragettes, an often neglected driving force for change that fueled cultural and class upheaval in early 20th century Britain. The lives of the woman portrayed are offered in relation to the shocking need for women in that era to be released from the bonds, legal and cultural, that kept them subservient and far poorer than their male counterparts in British society.

Spirit Burns focuses on the lives of three women who represent Britain’s stagnant class structure of the period in question. These women—a mill worker, a stage performer and a young lady of the upper class—all suffer from British society's endemic lack of opportunity for those of the “fairer sex to express themselves, manage their affairs and grow as active partners and competitors to the males who dominate and control their lives. Their at times militant struggle for the vote serves as an apt metaphor for all the power they were consistently denied on a day to day basis. Nothing holds them down more than the lock-tight grip of poverty and reduced opportunity that was the lot of woman up until the 1920’s.

Miss Jackson is as deft with words as she is in building characters and events you can believe in. And most especially skilled, the reader will discover, in allowing language and common parlance to clearly portray distinctions in class and lifestyles.

Spirit Burns is literature at its finest! I recommend it unhesitatingly.