Red Letter Poem #291

 

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 #291

 

 

 

 

Prelude

 

 

Before we begin, may I ask you a question?
Would it bother you if at some point
I forgot to remember the illusion that we
are made of solid matter?  That we instead
consist of atoms and electrical charges,
are ninety-nine percent empty space?

Would it bother you to look through
my suddenly spectral form and see
the backrest of this chair?

It wouldn’t be intentional, a parlor trick.
It’s just that when I think about broken children
lying in the rubble of bombed-out buildings
I sometimes find it difficult to remain tied to this world.

So if I seem to fade please don’t judge or be alarmed.
Just hold out your hand. We can touch, palm-to-palm,
to keep ourselves connected to this terrible and beautiful place,
to remind us we are made of the same stuff as the stars.

 

 

                                          ––Charles Coe

                                   

 

 

 

 

 

Like a living organism, a poem breathes, evolves over time, reflecting both its inner and outer landscapes.  And I think that growth occurs for both the poet’s understanding of what he or she has created as well as the reader’s.  I’m not referring to those poets who, late in life, see fit to return to the work of their youth, giving the pieces a new makeover (a practice that seems to me both perfectly understandable and extremely problematic).  I’m saying the work of art itself––without a syllable being altered––seems to emanate a different energy as the years pass, to reveal new dimensions.  Isn’t that why we return many times to a book, a movie, a work of art that has held deep meaning for us?  As we see that emotional terrain newly revealed, we discover that we, too, are not the same people who first sat in rapt attention as the vision unfolded.  And so it is with Charles Coe’s “Prelude.”  I’ve known Charles for several decades and was proud to have featured several of his poems in the Red Letters.  He sent me this piece, and I told him I’d save it for the right time.  Saying that now, I can’t quite remember what sort of rightness I was anticipating––only that I wanted to maximize the poem’s effect for this readership.  But on November 21, Charles passed away unexpectedly.  And it’s been something of a revelation to see how many different communities (not only our literary clan) were heartbroken by his death.  Perhaps this is certainly one measure of a life––the magnitude of its absence 

 

Of course, now rereading “Prelude,” we find everything utterly changed, viewing Charles and his work through the translucence of memory.  The time for spotlighting this spectral poem is, of course, overdue.  A year or so ago, Charles read for the annual Red Letter LIVE event, and he used this piece to open his reading.  “Before we begin,” the poem starts out in his oh-so-casual tone of voice (a common feature in Charles’ poetry––never stentorian or charged with literary affectation), “may I ask you a question?”  And now that intimacy has been established, he confides his deepest sense of wonder: “Would it bother you if at some point/ I forgot to remember the illusion that we/ are made of solid matter?”  Troubling, indeed––that our understanding of the physical world is often little more than a comforting illusion.  That our separateness, our alienation from one another, might comprise the real misapprehension?  And before we dismiss this as either “a parlor trick” or some New Age spiritual effusion, the poet slips into the heart of the matter: “It’s just that when I think about broken children/ lying in the rubble of bombed-out buildings/ I sometimes find it difficult to remain tied to this world.”  Since I first heard this poem read aloud, the scene with those broken children has shifted locales numerous times––and the challenge to our humanity has only increased exponentially.  As for the poet?  Perhaps we now have to concoct new ways to risk that “palm-to-palm” feeling of commonality, “to keep ourselves connected to this terrible and beautiful place”––and to reaffirm that we are, as Charles declares, much more than flesh and blood, than ideology and stubborn habit.  We “are made of the same stuff as the stars.”  

 

If perhaps you were not fortunate enough to know Charles, let me simply say that he was a poet, educator, exuberant baritone, avid blogger, big-hearted individual.  He’s the author of five poetry collections including All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents, and Charles Coe: New and Selected Works––all available from Leapfrog Press.  In addition to being a fine poet, he was a deeply-humane individual; the latter is a good deal harder to achieve than the former, especially in this day and age––and the achievement of both is a piece of good fortune for all the rest of us.  Charles paid as much attention to the lives of his fellow human beings as he did to his own––and somehow he accomplished this with the kind of ease we often term grace.  In this time, when wars seem to be instigated on a cruel whim, I recall the brief text of one of Kenneth Patchen’s poem-paintings (yet another poet-pacifist).  Depicting two of his fanciful creatures beneath a wobbly crescent moon, the poem reads in its entirety: “My program?  Let us all weep together.”  I believe Charles would approve––as long as he could interweave the weeping with a few of his resounding belly laughs.

 

 

There have already been numerous gatherings, readings, and potluck dinners where folks have come together to remember Charles, his poetry, his gentle spirit.  Two additional ones are still coming up––if you’re in the Boston area and would like to hear poets reading his work and remembering his always-generous approach to friends and strangers alike: one will be March 17th, 7 p.m. at Robbins Library in Arlington, MA; and The Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture and The Boston Public Library will hold a reading at their main branch on Saturday, April 11th, at 1:30 PM.

 

 

 

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/

Poet Charles Coe has passed--interview with Doug Holder

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HftI8JoJzDw&t=34s interview with Coe

I am so sorry to hear of Charles Coe's death. I first interviewed him for a small South End magazine, and since then I have read, served on the NEPC Board with him, reviewed him, and was on a panel with him to select the Somerville Poet Laureate. Here is an interview I conducted with him years ago... Fine man, poet, teacher, performer and citizen...

The Red Letter Poem 98

 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 #98

 

 

If it can be said there is any upside to the Covid pandemic (and that’s something I do with great trepidation when referring to an illness that has affected a half billion individuals worldwide, and extinguished nearly 6 million lives), it may be the sort of shift in global consciousness which, sad to say, only disaster seems to be able to quickly accomplish.  There’s been something of a broad awakening concerning human mortality and the utter fragility of all we love.  And that extends beyond the domain of family and friends, and touches on ideas of community, the environment, planetary survival.  I’m not suggesting it’s universal – and I am in no way minimizing the countervailing forces of power politics and fear.  But experiencing the possibility that we might not see our children or grandchildren grow up (or, during some of the darker days we’ve been through, that we’d enjoy even another spring), changes something fundamentally.  That knowledge projects a rather harsh spotlight onto how we’re passing through our days and what is it we truly value.  I don’t believe I’m being overly optimistic to suggest that, in our new pandemic reality, we might be entertaining more moments of – at least awareness, if not outright compassion – for all those anonymous fellow-travelers whose paths we cross in the supermarket or on the bus heading home, and who are staring back at us with curiosity from above their masks.

 

Charles Coe is a poet, educator, exuberant baritone, avid blogger, big-hearted individual.  In today’s Red Letter, I’m offering one of his poems that predates the pandemic (it’s included in his collection All Sins Forgiven: Poems For My Parents from Leapfrog Press) yet seems to be reflecting what I’ve come to think of as Covid-mind.  It takes one of those simple perceptions of the other and makes of it a small portrait of humankind on this troubled blue-green planet.  This is the transformative capability of a well-crafted poem: it can engage within us that cinematic effect of the ‘slow zoom’ – and not simply visually but within the depths of our emotional landscapes.  Its approach can either focus in on the fine-detailed microcosm, until even the familiar becomes quietly astonishing; or, as in the case of Charles’ poem, it can begin with the small specific detail and then broaden out to gradually assume something of a god-like perspective.  And from that great distance, I think our hearts feel like they must stretch their boundaries in order to encompass that deep feeling for (how could I not have seen it earlier?!) the rich complexity each individual life contains.  “For small creatures such as us,” wrote the planetary scientist Carl Sagan, “the vastness is only bearable through love.”  And paying attention – to the great swing of the galaxy, to the modest beauty passing outside the bus window, even to the mole on a girl’s neck (not to mention the poet’s precision as he describes it all in a notebook) – is nothing less than an act of love.

 

 

 

DNA

 

 

 

The young woman on the bus

wearing headphones

has a mole on her neck.

 

Perhaps the same mole

in the same place

on some ancient ancestor

itched with sweat as she

crawled on hands and knees

through the king’s garden,

back bent, pulling weeds.

 

I know someone whose husband

died a month after their baby's birth.

Years later, she had to turn away

when her teenaged son brushed

the hair from his girlfriend's

face with exactly the same gesture

as the father he had never known.

 

Some mysteries are greater

than the birth of stars;

that sound you hear the moment

before sleep is not the wind, but

your own flesh, in a timeless,

whispered conversation with itself.

 

 

                        ­­–– Charles Coe

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters 3.0: A New Beginning (Perhaps)   

At the outset of the Covid pandemic, when fear was at its highest, the Red Letter Project was intended to remind us of community: that, even isolated in our homes, we could still face this challenge together.  As Arlington’s Poet Laureate, I began sending out a poem of comfort each Friday, featuring the fine talents from our town and its neighbors.  Because I enlisted the partnership of seven local arts and community organizations, distribution of the poems spread quickly – and, with subscribers sharing and re-posting the installments, soon we had readers, not only throughout the Commonwealth, but across the country.  And I delighted in the weekly e-mails I’d receive with praise for the poets; as one reader recently commented: “You give me the gift of a quiet, contemplative break—with something to take away and reflect on.”

 

Then our circumstance changed dramatically again: following the murder of George Floyd, the massive social and political unrest, and the national economic catastrophe, the distress of the pandemic was magnified.  Red Letter 2.0 announced that I would seek out as diverse a set of voices as I could find – from Massachusetts and beyond – so that their poems might inspire, challenge, deepen the conversation we were, by necessity, engaged in.

 

Now, with widespread vaccination, an economic rebound, and a shift in the political landscape, I intend to help this forum continue to evolve – Red Letter 3.0.  For the last 15 months, I’ve heard one question again and again: when will we get back our old lives?  It may pain us to admit it, but that is little more than a fantasy.  Our lives have been altered irrevocably – not only our understanding of how thoroughly interdependent we are, both locally and globally, but how fragile and utterly precious is all that we love.  Weren’t you bowled over recently by how good it felt just to hug a friend or family member?  Or to walk unmasked through a grocery, noticing all the faces?  So I think the question we must wrestle with is this: knowing what we know, how will we begin shaping our new life?  Will we quickly forget how grateful we felt that strangers put themselves at risk, every day, so that we might purchase milk and bread, ride the bus to work, or be cared for by a doctor or nurse?  Will we slip back into our old drowse and look away from the pain so many are forced to endure – in this, the wealthiest nation on the planet?  Will we stop noticing those simple beauties all around us?  The poet Mary Oliver said it plainly: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  I will continue to offer RLP readers the work of poets who are engaged in these questions, hoping their voices will fortify all of ours.

 

Two of our partner sites will continue re-posting each Red Letter weekly: the YourArlington news blog (https://www.yourarlington.com/easyblog/entry/28-poetry/3091-redletter-123121), and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene (http://dougholder.blogspot.com).  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.