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 #283
December Song
No tree this year.
No needles to brush away.
No gifts to wrap at midnight.
No morning tears
ankle-deep in ruins.
The poinsettia is lush.
Outside the picture window I sprayed clean,
a cardinal decorates the honey locust.
My coffee is strong and hot,
and there is cream.
––Judith Hoyer
’
Reticence. Restraint. They’re two of the most powerful techniques in any poet’s toolbox. And if I wanted to teach these qualities, Judith Hoyer’s new poem, “December Song,” could easily serve as my textbook example. I had it in the queue for several months and intended to run it around the holidays. But there is such an interesting amalgam of contentment and bittersweetness evoked by the piece, I decided it would be a more fitting choice once the festivities had concluded, the decorations packed away, and the inevitable let-down has arrived. After all, the holiday celebrations signal the start of a long and unrelenting winter where emotional exuberance will be harder to come by.
I’d like to do something I haven’t done in the six years of Red Letter commentaries––an exercise for myself, but perhaps a useful one for readers as well: I’ll go through the poem line-by-line and point to some of the images conjured through nothing but implication, and the emotional facets whose impact is strengthened because they go without elaboration. Of course, this won’t be an exhaustive catalog––the Letters are not the occasion for full-blown critical essays, (and I’d risk violating the very recommendation in my opening lines). My feeling is that this spare ten-line poem possesses a reservoir of hidden strengths (and I hope you’ll excavate even more).
Let’s start with the title: I found myself wondering whether this would be a sentimental response to the wealth of holiday music, or the fashioning perhaps of some new lyrical response. Then the poem commences with a litany of no’s––certainly a rather un-Christmas-y stance which immediately alerted me to a very different emotional weather than expected. “No tree this year”––a muted tympany of four stressed monosyllables. “No needles to brush away.” Softening now into roughly three iambic feet, I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded that some negation may turn out to be a blessing. “No gifts to wrap at midnight.”––and the emotional rollercoaster plunges again, as I found myself entertaining scenarios that would bring this about: is this one of those lonely souls for whom the holidays only serve to magnify their suffering? A widow/widower, for whom family is an idea entombed in memory? Or someone estranged from kin, perhaps, regretting past choices? Of course, the author and speaker of a poem are not identical; still, I decided to ask Judith about the piece, before I accidentally trespassed into personal territory I ought not enter. She provided another possibility I hadn’t considered: that of aging parents who once were the center of all holiday-making, but now have become demure visitors in some family member’s home. Of course, it’s better not to know any specific background so you, dear reader, can compose inside your head the scenario which is most necessary for your imagination, and which (here comes that r-word into play again) the poet has been too reticent to explain. “No morning tears/ ankle-deep in ruins.” After three declarative statements––each self-contained on its own line––lines four and five are together one emotionally-complex sentence fragment that can be read in different ways, depending on your own mood. No tears, no ruins––that must be good, yes? No squalling children upset over what they did not receive? But then, rereading the pair: no little children whatsoever, no great anticipation in the quiet home, no frenzy of unwrapping, no unbridled delight.
Those five lines take us to the midway point in this diminutive poem––but watch how the inner landscape now shifts: four positive assertions make up the poem’s second half, carrying it toward culmination. “The poinsettia is lush.”––indeed, that lovely holiday icon. But beyond the plate glass window (which the speaker has kindly cleaned for our attention), the outside world reflects the inner––the bright cardinal like a berry on a bare tree (though the word “honey” cannot help but soften the austerity). “My coffee is strong and hot,” and so now we, too, hunker down to stare out at the season that’s been given to us, that luckiest of all gifts: another chance to experience the world and draw from it what is most needed. A strong and hot brew, just how I like it––but then the coup de grâce (chiming with the word “clean” from a few lines earlier): “and there is cream.” Oh, how I was delighted by that gentle resolution! And Judith was so restrained, she doesn’t sermonize about the ‘cream of life’s abundance’; she does not diminish this quiet acceptance with a grandiose word like joy. Because I, too, savor cream in my mocha java––and the poet has not burdened this delicate poem with any declaration of profound emotion––it rushes over me like a wave, a deep satisfaction.
I’ve overspent my weekly allotment and so I will just offer a few more sentences to introduce Judith who worked for years as a school psychologist, and only turned to writing poetry later in life (though she loved it all along). In 2017, she published her first chapbook with Finishing Line Press, and eventually a full-length collection, Imagine That (FutureCycle Press). Some of her poems have earned honors from The W.B. Yeats Society of New York, The New England Poetry Club, and the Tucson Festival of Books Poetry Awards. And to these, I’ll add one more personal bit of praise: when the song is singing its way through you to the page, a poet has to have enough respect (another r-word) for the process, for the reader, to allow it to say what it must, with no unnecessary embellished. Judith has.
The Red Letters
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https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices
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http://dougholder.blogspot.com
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