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