Red Letter Poem #317

   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 #317

 

 

 

 

 

Scarred Heart of a Selkie

 

 

My husband keeps resurrecting old photos of me: 26 years old, lean and sweat-straining in the Falmouth Road Race.  Smooth-faced twin of a Campbell soup kid, my Dorothy Hamill-hair framing the 35 mm Olympus camera that I prized.  Cropped headless by his camera, I was a naked Venus posed against the cliffs of Gay Head, my beach clay painted torso turning up the heat.  I never wanted that pedestal.  That girl didn't even appreciate what she had when she had it; always the ellipsis of self-doubt, the thin veneer of aspiration like spring ice on the Muddy River.  She went hungry to make weight, replaced indulgence with abstinence, sacrificed love to selfishness.  I've returned to the scene of those crimes, pardoned.

 

 

                    minding the body

                                lifting the weight of past souls

                                                small bites of ripe pear

 

                                                           ––Kerry Loughman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nearly everyone is familiar with the Japanese haiku––since the time of Basho, it’s become one of the most popular styles of verse on the planet.  Most of us will remember our earnest third-grade teachers instructing us in the ‘rules’ they thought defined the form, and then encouraging us to fill our notebooks.  Fewer, though, will be knowledgeable about tanka and renga, considerably older styles of poetry from which the haiku was eventually derived.  But I am surprised that the haibun has relatively little recognition here in the United States, even though there are scores of haiku societies and magazines devoted to traditional Japanese poetry.  A thumbnail description: haibun is a hybrid genre pairing a short prose piece––traditionally akin to a diary entry, travel sketch, or personal memory––and culminating with a haiku that’s not simply a reflection of the prose but often a leap of the imagination, or a shift in the mood and context.  Basho himself popularized the art form near the close of the 17^th century with five prominent collections of ‘travel’ writing, most notably The Narrow Road to the Deep North. 

 

By her own account, Japanese poetry and culture have been central influences for Kerry Loughman: accomplished photographer, retired educator, and––later in life––an avid Boston-area poet.  Her letter to me detailed: “2 years language study at college level, 19 years studying Shotokan Karate, one visit to Japan, and many years of trying to write in Japanese forms.”  A number of her poems confront the challenges associated with aging and, because of that, possess an invigorating kind of urgency.  Her poetry has appeared in various journals and websites including Nixes Mate Review, The Main Street Rag, Lily Poetry Review, Writer's Resist, and Mass Poetry’s Hard Work of Hope.  Today’s poem was triggered, not surprisingly, by a photograph––though not one of her own.  Her husband, also a photographer, often reprints older images from their past––in this case, a 1980’s shot of Kerry, caked in clay in front of the cliffs at Aquinnah, on Martha's Vineyard.  Again, I think I’ll let Kerry herself describe her thought process: “Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with the reminders of what I looked like [back] then. . .Most women know the feeling of constant attention to their bodies, their appearance––how it can define you, constrain you, and cause you to rebel and, sometimes, to grieve.”  But when lament transforms into art, the creator behind this new clarity is not debilitated by its expression, but empowered.

 

In the prose section, I was snagged by the use of that word “resurrecting” with all its connotation: not just a new life but redemption.  But the speaker does not glory in the recollection of that young body: “26 years old, lean and sweat-straining in the Falmouth Road Race.”  Nor the innocence of that “Smooth-faced twin of a Campbell soup kid, my Dorothy Hamill-hair framing the 35 mm Olympus camera that I prized.”  One of art’s great powers is to freeze a moment in time for our continual inspection.  If only the subject of the art were also spared what we casually term the ‘ravages of time’ (the razor-sharp bite of that word, ravages, contains a lesson we can only learn with mounting years).  But the description of the third photo is likely the one that will jolt us awake: “Cropped headless by his camera, I was a naked Venus posed against the cliffs of Gay Head, my beach clay painted torso turning up the heat.”  The combination of robust sexuality with implied violence––the model beheaded by the lens––probably felt more innocent in the ‘80s (with visions of the “Venus DeMilo” popular at the time), but is decidedly less so today.  As if the body’s beauty were not dependent on the mind enlivening it.  The speaker has come to some greater acceptance of her old striving for perfection––and I can imagine a number of readers nodding in agreement––but the word pardon still leaves us to wonder.  Unlike the mythical selkie of the title, we are not permitted to escape from and reinhabit those bodies into which we were born.

 

And then, after taking a breath, the haiku: “minding the body” (ah, the doubled meaning hinted here by that verb!); and “lifting the weight of past souls”––grown lighter, perhaps, as our hearts have ripened.  And finally: “small bites of ripe pear.”  I found that concluding line deeply satisfying and quietly unsettling, all at once.  Those “small bites”––do they speak to savoring the sweet pleasure, or the pinch of abstinence?  (And let’s not think too long about other women eating fruit from the mythological garden.)  I even wondered whether Kerry was remembering a marvelous haiku from one of the masters, Buson: “Blossoms on the pear/ and a woman in the moonlight/ reads a letter there.”  The womanliness of the pear––and its connotation of late-blooming fruit––suddenly conjures a half dozen possibilities condensed in that mysterious “letter.”  Kerry, too, hints at the tension inside love: between emotional abundance and contingency; the tangled path between self-negation and self-acceptance.  A difficult billet-doux for our troubled world, but a necessary one.

 

 

 

 

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:

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

 

* 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          

@StevenRatiner

 

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

The Vision Lab : Laboratory of Belonging Conference at Harvard this weekend!

Click on to enlarge

 

for more info:  https://visionlabcollective.com/

Red Letter Poem #316

  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 #316

 

 

 

 

Yahrzeit

 

 

Two glasses of wax,

each with a wick––

my parents, side-by-side

 

on the stove top.

Next to the kettle

they burn 

 

from sunset to sunset

and I can feel

their body heat

 

by waving a hand

six inches above.

I don’t fast or recite

 

the proper prayers

but Mom, didn’t you

enjoy the rasp

 

of match to flame?

Not sure about you, Dad––

pregnant, I skipped

 

your mother’s funeral

because she believed

the graveyard full

 

of seedy souls

prepared to root

in the unborn.

 

Now the world

has changed its ways

in ways we all

 

might be satisfied

to leave: whales nearing

net zero, boreal

 

forests thinned,

robots on mid-century

TV that scared me

 

now therapists

and travel guides with firm

pleasant voices; pets.

 

 

                 ––Joyce Peseroff

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yahrzeit is a Yiddish two-word lexical blend of ‘year’ and ‘time.’  It represents the anniversary of a loved one’s death and is marked by prayer and, in most Jewish households, the traditional thick glass candle that burns from sundown to sundown on that day of remembrance.  Having lost my father when I was very young––and my grandfather not long after that––I recall the yearly presence of the yahrzeit lights in our kitchen.  I can still picture my mother and grandmother, side by side, reciting the mourner’s prayer together.  But, unlike the lighting of sabbath candles, they did not wave the light, the warmth, toward their closed eyes––a gesture of benediction.  They prayed and then stood silent.  Was such loss simply inconsolable?  I watched them, but was too shy to ask questions, to discover what was taking place inside them––something I deeply regret.  Perhaps Joyce Peseroff was contemplating all those dangling conversations when she composed today’s poem of mourning.  Time escapes us, of course––yet still, we continue to think what we must, say what needs saying, even if only to an empty room.  And so Joyce’s piece is part retrospection, part prayer, and part witness to the commonality of loss––one that enlarges the human family far beyond our individual doorsteps.

 

As with most theological practice, there is a wealth of mystic symbolism in Jewish ritual.  Here, the candle flame represents the intangible power of the human soul; the wick, wax, and glass container reflect the materiality of our lives.  The day-long flame points to memory’s endurance, while the flickering is a palpable metaphor for our mortal frailty.  The simple act opens our minds to subtle layers of meaning.  In this regard, the practice of sitting quietly with a prayerbook or a volume of poetry shares a certain commonality.  But, as is so often the case, the hold of ritual dissipates from generation to generation, and the speaker here confesses that she doesn’t “fast or recite// the proper prayers.”  What she does do is sharpen attention: to the heat rising from the flames; to the companionable presence of this pair of stolid candles; to the mesmerizing cadence of language.  And she speaks to that inner sanctuary where our loved ones’ memory persists––which is its own form of blessing.  I love that she associates her mother with that “rasp// of match to flame”––the astonishing juncture where matter transforms into pure energy.  There’s a more complicated recollection concerning her father: an unfulfilled filial duty comes to mind, having missed her grandmother’s funeral.  Was it spiritual belief or superstition, fearing that the “seedy souls” of the dead might endanger her unborn child?  But Joyce’s poem recounts all this in so low-key a manner, it feels we must be intimates, sharing these stories at the kitchen table.  Inevitably, personal grief triggers thoughts of societal and even planetary loss.  And then the poet adds a bit of childhood anxiety about technological encroachment: the “robots” that once scared her as a girl are now commonplace in our lives: mechanical servants, companions, therapists, even pets.  Perhaps the poet is lamenting something greater that’s been laid to rest, lighting a candle for who we once were (what innocence!) and can never be again.

 

Poet, essayist, and educator, Joyce Peseroff’s sixth collection, Petition, was designated a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Book Award.  She also edited the collections Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake; The Ploughshares Poetry Reader; and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon––a continuing effort to pass along our valuable literary tradition to new generations.  For many years, she directed and taught in UMass Boston’s MFA Program where she helped fan the flames for many talented young writers.  Before closing, there’s a craft element in many of Joyce’s poems that I want to call attention to: the way she trusts the colloquial voice and quiet observation to carry the necessary emotional charge in her portrayals.  Many poets––myself included––tend to gravitate toward some sort of verbal flourish at the close of a poem.  Perhaps we’ve been seduced by the pyrotechnics of rock-and-roll songs and the climactic finales of Hollywood movies.  But Joyce rarely reaches for the ‘big finish.’  In the intimacy of a heart-to-heart, such a gesture might undercut the authenticity, kill the mood.  More often, she concludes with a modest diminuendo, an exhale of breath.  I don’t know about the ‘world,’ (as in T.S. Eliot’s formulation), but ‘this is the way the poem ends––not with a bang but a whimper.’  There is the striking of the match, the momentary eruption of light––but eventually, the guttering hiss as the wick gives way and a wisp of smoke rises.  Still, looking up from one of Joyce’s poems, I trust what has taken place, and sense that it has managed to penetrate my critical defenses, engage emotion, and cross that invisible membrane into memory.

 

 

 

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:

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

 

* 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          

@StevenRatiner

 

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