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 #310
Deer Skull (with Small, Deformed Antler)
“The skulls…were beautiful as anything I know…
strangely more living than the animals walking around…”
—Georgia O’Keeffe, in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz
He must have staggered into the clearing
in the grove of Shumard oaks, and fallen
there, in sight of Stanley Draper Lake
just east of the Cross Timbers—which is where
I found him. Or rather, I found one antler
protruding from the red-brown bed of oak
leaves—four upright, branching tines, off-white
against the leaf litter: late fall in central Oklahoma.
The afternoon was clear and dry: good hunting
weather, but there were no hunters this late
in the season, who knows why. I lifted the antler
and the whole skull came up in my hands,
clean of flesh and skin—he must have been dead
for weeks—the skull surprisingly heavy, though
missing the lower jaw. Then I noticed the other
antler—downturned, two-tined, and half the length
of the first. What caused this strange asymmetry?
I glanced around: in the oak-leaf scrum
were scattered bones, equally clean of flesh
—the rest of him? There wasn’t time to linger,
the friend with whom I had hiked here
needed to get home, and I would be leaving the state
soon. I hefted the skull to the car, and
would carry it without breakage from one move
to the next. I didn’t yet know the term
“drop-tine buck”—the bigger the dropped tine
the more prized by hunters. Would anyone have wanted
this stunted antler for a trophy? But I was the one
who found him, claimed him; and the disease
or hunter whose gunshot may have killed him
might be out there still—a message I could carry
in my own thinning human bones.
––Carolyne Wright
“Imperfections are not inadequacies;”––writes Brené Brown, educator, researcher, best-selling author––“they are reminders that we're all in this together.” And together, in the thick of it––where most living creatures spend the bulk of their days––is precisely where Carolyne Wright’s poetry situates her readers. She has learned from her mentors––poets like Richard Hugo, Elizabeth Bishop, W.D. Snodgrass, and William Stafford––the entrancing power of specificity, the ‘telling’ details that substantiate a moment in a reader’s imagination. But she’s mastered as well the discipline required to trust the poetic impulse, to give it free rein once it’s begun breaking into consciousness. Easier said than done, I might add. It requires that the more familiar internal voice––the one that usually narrates our days––step back from that role, becoming almost an observer to what’s unfolding intuitively. While lines begin galloping across the page, the poet must be willing to follow wherever the pen leads, no matter how wild the ride or how unanticipated the destination. In today’s new piece––titled like a specimen placard in a natural history museum––Carolyne is remembering a find she made when hiking with a friend in Oklahoma. Far from her Pacific Northwest stomping grounds, she came across a deer skull “protruding from the red-brown bed of oak / leaves—four upright, branching tines, off-white/ against the leaf litter…”. How quickly we come to trust the observational skills and emotional intelligence of the speaker––and that’s important because, coupled with that credibility, comes an increased vulnerability on our part: go ahead, keep searching––our minds reply to such forceful language––we’ll follow.
But quickly the scene shifts, and the speaker has returned home, where the skull will become one of her prized possessions. That much of the narrative is quite factual––I’ve seen the photos showing the rather dramatic remains of this proud creature on display. But that is, to my mind, the most superficial part of this inky journey. All the subtle, oh-so-casually offered asides in this poem begin to lead us into a kind of shadow-world, the sort of esoteric terrain that was once the province of mystics and shamans. That O’Keeffe epigraph functions something like a spirit-guide––as if our imagined connection to the natural world exceeds even our glimpses of the actual. “(I)n the oak-leaf scrum/ were scattered bones, equally clean of flesh––/the rest of him?” Perhaps, reading those words, you too felt a sudden welling dread, an intimation of our mortal fragility? It’s devastating to imagine how quickly the full and vibrant experience of a life––human or otherwise––can be stripped of its identity, simply lost to time. And what would usher in such a transformation? Sometimes we fall prey to “hunters” (and you don’t need me to remind you of the varied nature of violence plaguing our days). But other times, it’s merely some biologic circumstance or viral misfortune that stops us in our tracks, far from what we imagined to be our final season. I felt myself mourning for this creature and, through him, for all whom I hold dear.
Carolyne’s resume displays the passionate engagement of this writer’s life: poet, translator, editor, educator, she’s published ten poetry collections as well as five volumes of translation from Chilean, Brazilian Portuguese, and West Bengali and Bangladeshi women poets. Her work has garnered awards from organizations like the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the New England Poetry Club, and the American Book Award––as well as fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the New York State Arts Council, and the Fulbright and Witter Bynner Foundations, among others. She’s taught in universities and writing programs across the United States and abroad, and currently is on the faculty for the Richard Hugo House in Seattle. There is an interesting push-pull dynamic at play in today’s feature: a poem about asymmetry, written in neat 8-line stanzas––the tension of form and content. And the ‘imperfection’ of the antlers at the center Carolyne’s meditation marked this deer as a unique individual. Sad to say, the fascination with––and often fear of––difference, that generated so powerful a response in primitive man, still plays a role in our oh-so-modern experience. Something “out there” may herald our own destruction if we cannot learn to cope with all the idiosyncrasies that make us both unique and simply another member of the herd. “My imperfections and failures,” wrote Mahatma Gandhi, “are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at His feet.” That’s part of the message this poet has extracted from this holy relic––a prayer we might inscribe on our “own thinning bones.”
The Red Letters
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