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 #314
As I Lay Dematerializing
In this theater, in this reading of myself,
the pathologist says, “See? His body’s own
enzymes are breaking down his cells.”
One of the onlookers at the anatomy
lesson waxes, “Breaking out of his prison?”
The trained rooster the farmer’s daughter sent in
as a last resort at long last stops crowing
and splays down on top of me, a strange egg.
I was losing interest in my bank account.
Rage, rage against the dying—Yeah, yeah.
How to put this? The bases were loaded.
The organ was groaning. The bullpen was scratching.
I bloated, losing my soul of wit.
I took on rigor. They asked, What’s that mean?
I got over myself. I hovered
over the rags I lay in, this patchwork, my quilt.
––Michael T. Steffen
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm. . .
––Emily Dickinson
Where are we? It’s an appropriate question––within today’s poem, specifically, but within the whole of our turbulent lives. And how can we hope to navigate if we can’t take our bearings? But, of course, how may we orient ourselves if we’ve no fixed point of reference, a guiding star? It’s not only Emily’s predicament––and that of today’s featured poet, Michael T. Steffen––it’s our own daily struggle. It seems more than fitting that in Michael’s marvelously disorienting “As I Lay Dematerializing,” we must experience our true lostness if we’re to have any hope of being found. So what does a poet use to help navigate? Two things quickly come to mind: the history of what’s come before, and a reliance upon the music of the mind.
Michael’s poem is teeming with literary history. I’m guessing the phrasing of the title put you in mind of Faulkner’s masterpiece, As I Lay Dying––and that, in turn, created echoes of a self-aware corpse-to-be on its journey toward some final place of rest. (The English majors among us may even recall that the novel’s title is an echo from Homer’s Odyssey––a phrase spoken by Agamemnon in the underworld, riven by disappointment.) This poet is situating himself amid the brother/sisterhood of scribes, hoping to use the past to chart a course through the bewildering present. Like Faulkner, Michael employs a kind of stream-of-consciousness as a way of making the mind porous to the world and the culture in which it’s rooted. All those flickering impressions and bits of memory may seem a jumble––but the thinking brain is the body’s engine, and everything becomes fuel for the fire. Right from Michael’s opening line, the reader must shift into a higher gear: is this an operating “theater” where a patient’s life is at stake? Or a post-mortem table where fatal flaws will be revealed? Or perhaps some Theater of the Absurd performance where, from our balcony seats, we can gawk at the farce of one human desperately trying to make meaning of the chaos?
Before we can get comfortable, in comes that “trained rooster” to hunker down upon the protagonist’s chest as if guarding some sort of cosmic egg. Startling, the strange gyrations of which the mind is capable: bad puns (“losing interest”), bits and pieces remembered from freshman lit (as the patient in question brushes aside Dylan Thomas’ classic villanelle, and slips into a kind of Fenway Park of the Mind––the tone more Abbott and Costello than John Updike). “I bloated, losing my soul of wit,” says the poet, throwing a little Hamlet into the mix. Indeed, how can brevity survive when the mind is flooded with so much tumult? And yet, if nothing else, a poem is an intentional act of focus––and so the speaker attempts to take these rags of consciousness and make a quilt from them––“a momentary stay against confusion” (if I can welcome another New Englander’s voice), and a purposeful counter to the Welshman’s “the dying of the light.” It may not be much––this determined straining for clarity––but perhaps it’s all we can do.
Michael has recently published his third poetry collection––I Saw My Life (Lily Poetry Review Press), centered around the long title piece, an impressive narrative exploration in 41 sections. He’s also been the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and an Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award. Michael’s work has appeared in numerous fine journals, and I’m pleased he’s become a frequent Red Letter contributor. He is also an organizer of poetry events, honoring the work of contemporary poets as well as past masters. And that, after all, is one of culture’s primary purposes: it affirms that others have traveled this path before us; that their experiences and insights might accompany us on the journey, especially at moments when our very survival seems at stake. That’s where the music comes in: we can feel the rhythmical charge within us, elevating language into song. That instinctive sense is so primal, visceral, we trust it to steer us safely through the evolving poem. Dickinson’s Musca domestica brings her to this: “With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –/ Between the light – and me –/ And then the Windows failed – and then/ I could not see to see.” The musicality is so unusual but self-assured, our hearts become willing passengers. And Michael performs a similar feat with: “They asked, What’s that mean?”––just as we readers might be asking ourselves the same. But then the poet calms the choppy seas with a playful double entendre and a little cascade of V-sounds: “I got over myself. I hovered/ over the rags I lay in, this patchwork, my quilt.” This blanketing consciousness of ours may indeed be rife with holes, but it comforts us, keeps us warm through the day’s uncertain weather.
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:
https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices
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