Red Letter Poem #238

 

 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 #238

 

 

 

 

Two Poems from Martha Collins

Right up front, this must be said: we hope we’re wrong. We pray our fears are unfounded and, as the curtain is about to rise on this second Trump presidency, it contains none of the reckless developments which made the first so disastrous for so many individuals. Perhaps all the promises of retribution against their enemies will prove to be only campaign bluster––and the plans for reshaping two-and-a-half centuries of democratic precedence will never come to pass. But one thing is certain: if we pretend that this is the new normal; if we turn a blind eye to political powerplays and egregious behavior, thinking this is merely an effort to shake things up, then we may experience an unthinkable transformation for these once-United States––a circumstance we never imagined our children, our grandchildren would ever face.



Martha Collins is something of a unique literary talent. Poet, translator, educator, historian without portfolio, she’s been lauded for her book-length examinations of social and political forces and the ways they are manifest in the lives of ordinary Americans (though the poet uncovers extraordinary circumstance at every turn). In 2022, she published her eleventh volume of poetry, Casualty Reports (Pitt Poetry Series). The following year, her fifth volume of translations from the Vietnamese was released; Dreaming the Mountain (in collaboration with Nguyen Ba Chung) carries over into English work from across a forty-year period by the Buddhist poet and scholar Tuệ Sỹ. Among Martha’s trove of honors are fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation––as well as three Pushcart Prizes, the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, the Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Let me start today with what must surely be one of her briefest of poems (something of a carry-over from last week’s Red Letter installment gathering poetic one-liners:)





Erratum, November 2024



We said it would be close. It wasn’t even





This miniature offers us a glimpse into the DNA of Martha’s poetry: in the smallest of gestures, or the most unassuming of grammatical shifts, the synaptic sparks of a thinking mind are revealed. It likely took a minute or so before you entertained the double-meaning of the word even (truncated, and without punctuation), and the ache of our society’s disequilibrium is conjured once again. But doesn’t the title also elicit a certain fear and trembling? How can something so consequential be reduced to one of those little paper slips (like a ballot?) we sometimes find tucked into a just-published volume?



Sensitized to her technique, there are so many small but potent inflection points in this new poem, “Cast,” which arrived in my inbox. Its composition began eight years back, at the dawn of the first Trump presidency; but she set it aside, perhaps feeling it did not accomplish enough. But when she returned to it in 2024, and updated the dramatis personae, something new and unexpected took place.





Cast





for State the head of Exxon a billionaire

for Labor a critic and violator of labor



for Environmental a climate change denier

for Education a critic of public schools



for Housing someone who simply lived in a house

for Homeland Security someone to build a wall



for Senior Councilor race white don’t ask

for Attorney General immigration watch out



Intermission



for Attorney General accused pedophile oops

for Defense defender of war crimes sex offender



for Homeland Security someone who shot her dog

for Education a wrestling empire exec



for France a family associate convicted felon

for Israel no such thing as Palestinians



for Health a conspiracy anti-vaxxer no training

for whatever he wants the richest man in the world



(2016, 2024)





Once again, the lines feel just a little breathless, lacking all punctuation. The title makes us imagine we’re perusing the inside of a Playbill, as the overture swells and we await the first act. And for each of the President’s appointees, the poet insists on bearing witness, on reminding readers who “only the best people” really turned out to be. The bitter ironies are evident throughout, but I loved a line like “for Senior Councilor race white don’t ask”––there’s a whole op-ed diatribe condensed into those closing four words.



But then comes what is, for me, the most devastating element in the poem, a one-line stanza: “Intermission.” And suddenly the relative calm we’ve felt for four years vanishes––poof!––in a cloud of stage-mist. There were certainly failings during the last administration (we should never turn our national life into a fairy tale, no matter who occupies the White House––self-delusion is the opioid that allows awful things to take place on the national stage.) But life felt (for lack of a better word) normal. What is being promised by the incoming administration is anything but. And as the second act begins, Martha introduces the whole new cast of characters, and my heart turns leaden. Perhaps that is all a poet can do at the moment: demand that we sit up straighter in our seats, pay attention, bear witness to what is taking place. Remember, because of the recent election, we all have earned a certain degree of authorship for the scenes being enacted all around us. Are the actors, emboldened, going off-script? There will be some who applaud. And others whose lives will suddenly be torn open, dashed against these political shoals. We cannot simply choose to exit the theater––that is not an option. The strength of our commitment to this democratic experiment will be tested. The final act is being written as we speak.

 

 

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