Red Letter Poem #288

 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 #288

 

 

 

 

Necking

 

 

Though we were the same age, maybe twelve at the time,

Delores Perkins was a good head taller than me

and a challenge to kiss.  I had to hold my mouth up to hers,

and she had to bend over me and dip her lips to mine

like one of those drinking toy ducks that, once you got it

started, bobbed and bobbed and bobbed, and went on

bobbing until you stopped it, this even when we were

sitting down, side by side in the musty plush seats

of the old Capitol Theater (seats that my mother warned

probably had lice), a flickering, fluttering dusty shaft

of light from the projection booth just over our heads.

 

To take back the initiative, I had to twist myself around,

up onto one hip, and stretch to raise myself to her height,

the elbow of the arm I had around her pressed to the wall

behind us to help me balance, my free hand wanting to cup

one breast or the other but held out and away, squeezing

the arm rest, not permitted by Delores to do anything but 

kiss her and kiss her until I ached from the waist down,

and then, after the movie, the Saturday double feature,

when we stepped out blinking into the afternoon light

Delores—where are you now, Delores?—made me follow

about ten feet behind her because she was taller than me.

 

 

                                             ––Ted Kooser

                                   

 

 

 

 

Indeed: where are you now, Delores?  Ted Kooser has posed the question; and now we, too, would like to know.  Ted––as I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you––is one of America’s most distinguished poets.  He’s the author of scores of books featuring poetry, essay, memoir and children’s stories.  The complete accounting of his honors and awards reads like a densely packed page from the OED, but surely these must top the list: former United States Poet Laureate; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry; and Presidential Professor Emeritus at The University of Nebraska, where he taught younger generations how the dailiness of our lives can yield the most vital and authoritative poems.  I would be remiss if I didn’t add that Ted’s most recent poetry publication is Fellow Creatures, a delightful chapbook of 27 animal and insect poems he published recently with Red Letter Editions to help raise money for this project’s continuance.  (If you have an interest in purchasing copies, you can visit: https://stevenratiner.com/product/fellow-creatures/)  Ted is an 86-year-old, four-time cancer survivor, but approaches each new day with the sort of energy (not to mention a sense of acceptance and gratitude) any of us would feel fortunate to possess.  Nearly every morning, he wakes early and, before the chores of his Nebraska farm, spends an hour or two at his desk, allowing free rein to an imaginative life that seems inexhaustible.  When he shared one of those morning poems with me a while back, I earmarked it for this holiday honoring a third-century Roman saint, where we celebrate love in all its unruly manifestations.

 

The very title of the poem, “Necking,” alerts us to the dated (or one might say innocent) nature of this memory.  When the poet compares Delores’ descending kisses to “those drinking toy ducks that, once you got it/ started, bobbed and bobbed and bobbed, and went on/ bobbing until you stopped it,” how can you not smile and wince at the same time?  Of course, it would be difficult to overstate the vital importance, within the adolescent mind, of how we appear to others.  So while there was a clear attraction between the two twelve-year-olds in Ted’s wry poem––and few forces are more powerful than the hormonal imperative, that dizzying siren song of desire––the fact that the boy was so much shorter was a shame the girl chose not to bear.  And something of that rejection has not lost its sting, three-quarters of a century after those furious bouts of kissing.  I was entranced by the narrator’s gymnastic machinations, trying to regain “the initiative,” hoping he might be able to advance beyond osculation to the storied first or second base of a boy’s yearning.  But Delores had her strict boundaries, and Ted’s “ache” was not to be relieved.  Perhaps that makes the memory all the more enduring.  And that “flickering, fluttering dusty shaft/ of light from the projection booth just over our heads” hints at a more adult, and perhaps less authentic world, towards which these young people are being inexorably drawn.  Many decades later, the ‘movie’ playing inside the poet’s mind has the power to turn back time and restore something of the body’s primal knowledge.

 

As for that pressing question: I believe I can tell you exactly where Delores is.  She is living in the neural village this poet has erected inside his mind.  She is still twelve years old, alluring, a lofty presence for this diminutive boy.   She thinks often of those perpetual kisses inside the intimate movie-theater-darkness––even as she relives a kind of purgatorial embarrassment, always walking away from what might have been true love.  Or teenage lust.  Or simply that half-blind ache whose intensity was meant to instruct us: we are living now.  This is hardly unique to Ted’s experience––we each have built a similar refuge: some situated in the midst of a metropolis of memory; others, a more solitary hamlet on an expansive Midwestern plain.  All we ever were, and all we’ve discovered, remains in residence there––though perhaps there is a propensity among poets to visit them with greater frequency than most.  It is a beautiful anomaly that living now is richer because it contains as well our living then, and also our vivid might have lived.  I, for one, am grateful that poets like Ted Kooser found a way to reproduce that neural landscape in ink, an enrichment for all my living to come.

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

* 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:

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* 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

 

* The weekly installment is also available at

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          

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And visit the Red Letter archives at: https://StevenRatiner.com/category/red-letters/

Poet Wendy Drexler harvests what remains

Recently, I caught up with my fellow New England Poetry Advisory Board Member Wendy Drexler to talk about her new collection of poetry  "Harvest What Remains" 

 From her publisher:

In Harvest of What Remains, Wendy Drexler navigates her intense journey as primary caregiver for her husband as Alzheimer's wraps its great arms around them, irrevocably altering their relationship in ways that call upon depths of grief and survival strategies of dissimulation as well as the imperative to sow seeds of love and compassion.

No doubt, Alzheimer's is a devastating disease. But even in life's most dire circumstances, we can find beauty, maybe ugly beauty...in the situation. Your thoughts?



Yes, Alzheimer's is indeed devastating and ugly, but there are many beautiful moments with a loved one. Perhaps the most beautiful gift has been my growing capacity for tenderness and compassion. For example, when we were getting haircuts together and I was helping my husband put on his coat, a woman in the salon came over and asked if she could "step into the middle of this love." When you are so important to someone, when you are "his person," you play a very sacred role in their life, and while it's a very demanding role, there are definitely blessings to be found that are deep and beautiful.


This may be a strange question. Could there be a sense of discovery in the disease. We all eventually go back to our childlike state. The question is—since your husband was slowly losing his memory, and you reintroduced him to things—was their a sense of wonderment for him?


Yes, definitely. Alzheimer's silver lining has been (at least for me, as I can't speak for my husband), that as his memory fades, rendering the past a jumble, and the future disappears in vagueness, he lives increasingly in the aspirational present, making connections with nearly everyone he sees, stopping to chat with strangers, complimenting someone on her bright sweater, enriching their lives and well as mine. Time is no longer a rush to accomplish anything. It's a very Buddhist insight: "Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Present moment. Wonderful moment."


You capture a moment in the poem, "In the Kitchen," watching your husband's confusion as he tries to navigate around it. I imagine each day is a string of banal events that lead up to oblivion. It sort of like watching a dour Beckett play, each day wondering what the "Endgame" will be.


Actually, cognitive decline is so incremental and the day's challenges are so great that it takes your full attention and energy to be a caregiver. I rarely think of the end game. Especially in the last year or two before my husband went into memory care, my days were consumed in a state of nearly constant vigilance to keep him clothed, fed, safe, and as happy as possible. And I had, and greatly needed, a lot of help from a wonderful caregiver. And there are different stages of the disease, and in his case, an earlier stage of anger and frustration at feeling controlled, which was extremely difficult. No one likes to lose autonomy and yet one neurological aspect of the disease, stemming from changes in the brain, is that someone with Alzheimer's is not aware of their own decline. This is called anosognosia. I found that it was a constant challenge learning to respond at each stage of the disease, to learn not to argue, to accept that I could not control or stop the progression, to develop greater patience, along with skills such as the telling "fiblets," and to feel satisfaction when I handled an exchange successfully. So life has definitely not been banal. In the acknowledgments in my new book, I write, "While I fervently wish you had never developed Alzheimer's, the other side of having to endure it has been my ever-deepening compassion--in that, you have been my teacher."


In your poem "At Hansen Farm" you freely engage your senses with nature, and the sweet pleasures of ice cream. Has your experience with your husband helped you to seize the moment or savor the moment more than you previously have?


I think I've been inclined toward trying to savor the moment for some time, and of course, writing poetry is a kind of paying attention. Trying to savor moments with my husband is a practice in lowering my expectations, for example, taking a deep breath when he hasn't taken a shower, that he's only half shaved, because we are on our way to a family gathering and he's just said, "It's so wonderful to see you!" I have to constantly remind myself of his limitations, of my tendency to become impatient and to have too many expectations, and to try to appreciate his pleasure at seeing me and our being together.


Has writing this collection been cathartic for you?


Definitely. The poems in this collection have been written nearly simultaneously to the events as they've taken place, in the heat of the moment. Writing these poems has enabled me to reflect on my experiences and process my emotions; to legitimize my anger, grief, and fear; and to find greater compassion for myself and for my husband. I have a number of poems I call "Reconstructed Sapphic Fragments," in which I've taken fragments of poems by Sappho, translated by Ann Carson, and written around the fragments. Then I erase the first poem to create a second poem, an erasure of the fragment poem. Both the reconstructed fragments and erasures have surprised me in that I seem to be offering myself advice and consolation. For example, in "Reconstructed Sapphic Fragment 83," I write, "Carry me, oh tide, let me try to give thanks." That's the advice and consolation part. And in the ersasure of this poem, the distillation is "night again turns time to tanks," a surprising image I would never have found if not through erasure.


I've also really enjoyed my creative collaboration with Cambridge visual artist Connie Saems, whose drawings and cover art grace the book. To see my words transformed into letter drawings is inspiring and takes the poems to another level of richness and meaning.


Is poetry a sort of caregiver for you?


Definitely, that's a beautiful insight!


Why should we read this book?


To quote Rosalynn Carter, "There are only four kinds of people in the world--those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will become caregivers, and those who will need caregivers." Caregiving touches everyone's life. I hope this book will be a source of solace and greater understanding for those who've already shared this journey and will provide insight to those who have not yet experienced the challenges and rewards of caring for a loved one.

 How to Make Even a Little of It Slow Down

At the hot pot restaurant, we dip kabocha squash, sweet as candy,  

into miso broth. Lotus root dense as meat. I scald my tongue, 

trying to eat too quickly. That impatience again. These days, 

I can’t listen to any more sad stories. Thank goodness 

on the Nature show the endangered pangolin on the island 

of Taiwan made it into the protected forest and found a mate 

before the end of the breeding season. That the adorable 

African bush baby, abandoned by his pregnant mother, 

escaped the snake and the hostile bush babies and was able 

to travel six miles in five days to the outskirts of Praetoria 

where a friendly pack of bush babies welcomed him, 

and suburbanites had laid out bananas on platforms linked 

by ropes strung between trees. The bush babies mashed 

bananas all over their happy faces and gamboled among 

the ropes and trees. At the restaurant, I grab the clam 

you are about to eat raw and toss it into the hot broth. I have to 

watch out for you all the time now. You couldn’t hear 

my conversation with D and G across the table. So sweet 

how you start talking to our waitress instead, teaching her 

muchas gracias and buenos dias, asking her for a placemat 

to write down sentences so she can talk with Latino kitchen staff 

and customers. How to say La comida está muy magnifico! 

Quieres un poco de cerveza? She tells us she’s from Laos 

and she squats right next to you beside our booth. 

She smiles a lot. Let’s say I’ve never seen a waitress stop to talk 

to a customer for so long. Let’s say we need more hope, more 

bush babies who find new families and new homes. 

More protected forests. More treetops and more mashing 

our happy faces with kabocha squash. Let’s slow it down 

over a meal. Let’s savor the lotus root and the bok choy 

and the wrinkled cabbage leaves 

we’ll learn to let cool long enough 

we won’t burn our tongues.

—first published on Autumn Sky Poetry Daily

  *************Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Harvest of What Remains received honorable mention for the Paul Nemser Prize and will be published in February 2026 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Mid-American Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, and The Threepenny Review, among others. She was awarded the 2025 E.E. Cummings prize from the New England Poetry Club. A recipient of the Juror's Prize for Art on the Trails, Southborough, MA, in 2021, Wendy served as poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, from 2018-2023, as programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club from 2016–2024. She currently serves on the Club’s advisory board. Her website is wendydrexlerpoetry.com.