Red Letter Poem #315
An Unnoticed Moment in Eden:
the Apostrophe’s Fall
“That fallen leaf from the ruined garden”
––from: “Grief’s” by Steven Ratiner
Still high above the ground, in
The moment of someone else’s weakness,
When it is still too early for
The woodchucks and mice and trout,
The beetles with their shining elytra,
To know they are now dying,
The apostrophe has just detached
And is surprised and unaware
It now means loss or is possessed
By the serpent-S following,
And is about to start the slow
Descent, to drift into its
Increasing shadow, into
That twilight-dimming space
The dead will own.
––Jack Stewart
Before I can discuss my response to Jack Stewart’s startling little mythology, I must begin with the literary elephant in the room: the epigraph. Poets, of course, use epigraphs for a whole range of purposes. Sometimes it’s to invite the work of another poet into the reader’s mind––a choral background awaiting a new soloist to take the stage. Or it might signal the harmony or antiphony of thought between an older work and one’s own. But often, it is a small homage to acknowledge that some element in another’s poem so thoroughly entered this writer’s consciousness that it triggered a new creation in response. I can say that, over the years, I’ve tipped my hat in this manner dozens of times. But when I received “An Unnoticed Moment. . .” from today’s poet, who I’ve gotten to know through his Red Letter contributions, I was shocked to realize that this was the first time I’ve ever been a recipient of this gesture. We forget, sometimes, that when we put our work out into the world, there are actual readers who might lay claim to these poems, use them for unanticipated purposes––and even, in the most intense instances, feel the need to respond to what they’ve discovered on the page. I felt deeply honored. . .and then immediately fearful: what if I didn’t actually like how Jack used my line as a jumping-off point? But I’d nothing to worry about: this poet took some thematic elements from my recent collection, Grief’s Apostrophe, and used them to challenge his own vision––about the grammar of loss and the power of a simple punctuation mark.
Among other things, my collection explored the way we struggle to carry our deepest emotions into language, and how every element at our disposal must be used in an attempt to portray and illuminate. In one poem, I used a metaphor for the apostrophe that seems to have lodged in Jack’s ear: “That fallen leaf from the ruined garden.” Such powerful meaning to be embedded in so diminutive a symbol; it signals both possession and a placemark for absence. Somehow Jack found himself within an Edenic space where all once seemed possible––but now some dire change was taking place. In his poem, the leaflike punctuation mark hovers “high above the ground”––that earthly domain from which, according to the Biblical text he’s called to mind, we arise and to which we return. Circumstance is about to lay claim to some unsuspecting pronoun: “The moment of someone else’s weakness.” The poem has brought to mind the essence of all mortal frailty, and the passage from an inherent grace to an inevitable decline. I loved those lines of enumeration––“The woodchucks and mice and trout,/ The beetles with their shining elytra”––which also echo the primal human task of naming all we see (even as we are reminded that we creatures must share the same fate). “The apostrophe has just detached/ And is surprised and unaware/ It now means loss or is possessed/ By the serpent-S following…”. Here, the apostrophe itself is a consciousness whose descent signals the great transformation––and I found myself smiling ruefully at that “serpent-S,” as if all fruitful knowledge was embodied in every mouthful of language.
Today’s poem marks Jack Stewart’s seventh appearance in the Red Letters (which may be a record). His fine first book, No Reason, was published in the Poeima Poetry Series––and, over the years, his work has appeared in scores of literary journals including Poetry, the New York Quarterly, and the Iowa Review, as well as international journals in Ireland, Austria, and Italy. Formerly a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology, he taught creative writing in Fort Lauderdale at the Pine Crest School––but, for the first time, I’m having to shift that verb to the past tense. After four decades as an educator, working with students at various levels and educational centers, Jack has recently retired. My hope is that this new expansive time will bring us closer to an anticipated second collection. I love how Jack’s poems celebrate the creative impulse, play within the endless possibilities of human experience––but do not shy away from the most challenging discoveries along the way. In today’s piece, that inky curl––like a dried leaf or a wisp of imagination––is about to “start the slow/ Descent, to drift into its// Increasing shadow, into/ That twilight-dimming space/ The dead will own.” Nothing we can do will prevent that fall––but the attention we bring to the moment, and the way we are able to memorialize the experience in language, feels as if we’ve done more than simply surrender. Tell me: is it too much to think that all we commit––to each other, to that sacred ground––renews the garden’s fertility? (Apostrophe-S––because we belong to that green beauty even still, as it belongs to us.)
The Red Letters
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* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:
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