Red Letter Poem #185

 

A holiday gift for poetry-lovers?

Help support the work of

The Red Letters

 

Announcing

 

Red Letter Editions #1

 

 

“hello stranger”

 

 

A poetry broadside by Fred Marchant

 to benefit the Red Letter Project

 

We’ve just published a letterpress broadside of Fred’s wonderful poem

“hello stranger”

 

It’s a heartfelt invitation to the reader and an invocation of the soul.

 

Funds raised will support the continuing outreach of this project as well as

honorariums for poets performing at the annual Red Letter LIVE! readings

 

The broadside: 9.5”X18” on 118# Flurry white 100% cotton cover stock

Signed by the poet, in a limited edition of 50

 

A copy will be available for contributions of $30.00 or more

(please add $5.00 for flat packaging and postage)

 

Checks can be made out to Steven Ratiner and mailed to:

33 Bellington Street, Arlington, MA 02476

or paid via Paypal (enso33@yahoo.com)

 

 

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 #185

 

 

 

Fever





My son believes messages are conveyed.

Sitting up in bed, middle of the night,

he wants me to tell him what it says,

to read the words on the framed poster

that hangs on the bedroom wall, the airplane

with the lips logo painted on the side:

Rolling Stones American Tour 1972.



In his delirium he has seen too much:

“A cow hooked up to a device. A bad guy

did it. And there was an orange, one that

just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

He gets some relief at last, remembering

a dream of a soccer game. “You don’t

have to bring the ball,” he says happily.



Talking through his hat, the expression

my mother used for conversations held

under fever’s tightening grip. She said it, too,

about bragging, or anyone making promises,

when they couldn’t follow through.



Again and again, I am called to save him.

I put my head down on his chest,

lift up when I hear his little heart

beating strong and true, see how it makes

the white sheet gently rise and fall.



His hair is soaked from sweating it out

in visions of a world all mixed up. To anyone

with ears and the strength to save him

from what had seemed so real, he yelled,

“Help! See it! It looks like The Joker.”



I put on the light and the shadow dispersed.

It was only the lampshade askew on the porcelain

night light, the beautiful pea green boat carrying

the odd couple adrift at sea. Their light’s the light

of the moon, so Dance by the light of the moon.

 

 

––Mary Bonina

 

 

Worse than any suffering that may befall us: the suffering of those we love.  Or so it’s been in my experience.  And this is acutely felt when we are, for the most part, helpless to alleviate that pain––when the only medicine we can offer is our presence, a healing touch, the love we try to radiate from our bodies like sunlight.  So it is in Mary Bonina’s memory poem depicting her young son trying to cope with a spiked fever and the flood of attendant fears that come from being small and unmoored in the all-too-large world.  I love how Mary enables us to be of two minds within the narrative: quickly, I find myself in parental mode, worrying about the boy whose body aches and whose mind is awash with terrifying images.  But somehow the more potent and surprising experience is how easily I found myself able to re-inhabit my six-year-old self, a time when most of us viewed our parents as omnipotent beings in charge of making the universe safe and comprehensible.  But, of course, the child is incapable of seeing the reality of that equally-fearful adult––which suddenly catapults me back into my parental role, shaken by the knowledge of my own frailty.

 

Did you like how Mary uses her colloquial tone to make the narrative feel intimate, close?  And how those hints of old and new pop culture make the setting wholly believable? (It’s quite a leap, though, from “If I don’t get some shelter/ ooh yeah, I’m gonna fade away” back to “Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight.”)  In the poem, we start to feel as if we were a member of the family––and perhaps that is precisely what poetry, in all its manifestations, attempts to achieve: we are indeed familial, even those strangers who too often pass by unnoticed.  Language helps grant us membership in this mortal household.  And so, for a few minutes, this is our little boy as well––just as we are that very child in the sweat-soaked bed, desperate for someone’s comforting lips on our forehead.  Exiting the poem, might our world-view be colored (ever so slightly) by that tenderness?

 

Mary has authored two poetry collections and a memoir (all from Cervena Barva press), and has a forthcoming chapbook entitled Lunch in Chinatown.  Her poem “Drift”, a winner of UrbanArts "Boston Contemporary Authors" prize, was engraved on a granite monolith outside Boston’s Green Street Station of the MBTA Orange Line.  She’s been honored with a number of fellowships including seven from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts where she has been a fellow since 2002.  Her poems, appearing in numerous journals and anthologies, are savored for their emotional clarity.  Today’s piece begins: “My son believes messages are conveyed”––and, after passing through these fevered stanzas, I believe it as well: from childhood dreams, from the rooms we share, from the family we love, and from resonant poems such as this.

 

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* 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

 

and 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 Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

Red Letter Poem #153

 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 #153

 

 

 

 

On March 10, 2020, the Governor of Massachusetts declared a state of emergency in response to the Covid pandemic.  Quickly, much of our country entered lockdown, and it didn’t take long for me to see the devastating effects that isolation was having on households and communities.  Fear is always magnified if you believe you’re facing trouble alone.  People were desperate to find ways of connecting with family and friends.  I decided to use my mandate as Arlington’s Poet Laureate to make a modest contribution: to try to remind us that a greater we still enveloped us all; that we’d been through terrible challenges before and would surely survive this one as well.  Isn’t that one of the essential features of any literature, a tangible continuity?  Ten days later, the first Red Letter poem arrived in several thousand inboxes, thanks to a partnership with seven area arts and community organizations.  The weekly poems were intended to provide comfort, insight and – as all art aspires to achieve – an experience of our bedrock commonality.  I was surprised and delighted by how quickly these Letters were embraced.

 

Since the project was rooted in Arlington, I began by seeking out writers from this community – and I had no doubt which poet I’d ask to be Red Letter #1.  Fred Marchant is not only a highly-esteemed poet – author of five award-winning collections – he is an educator, editor, translator and (most important) the sort of individual whose work is informed by a deep commitment to the spirit of a shared world.  Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay to any poet: I don’t just read Fred’s work, I re-read it.  His books do not sit attracting dust on my shelf.   I return to his poetry most often when I’m needing a clear and deeply humane voice, one that both reassures and challenges – especially important in turbulent times like these, when despair is still only a phone call or a headline away.  The Red Letters has since grown to include poets and readers from across the United States and beyond, spreading most often by electronic word-of-mouth.  Today’s installment will mark the beginning of our fourth year of publication – and I couldn’t have a better voice to mark the occasion than Fred’s, here debuting a new poem from what I sense is a new book beginning to take shape.

 

The literary tradition of an ars poetica involves poems attempting to examine the very definition of the art form.  I think something different is taking place in this piece: Fred has shaped a poem that explores the essential relationship between. . .well, I’m not quite certain.  When I first received “hello/stranger”, I thought it was the writer/reader bond made manifest – a sort of prayer mat we might set out before a cherished text.  On the tenth reading, I thought this might be the poet, in a Whitmanesque gesture, welcoming his own self into a new consciousness, into this ancient poetic and spiritual tradition.  I’ve certainly had many mornings when I’ve awoken, feeling a stranger to my own existence and – thank goodness – sometimes a poem was close at hand to focus my attention and help steer my way back home.  My feelings about this poem continue to deepen, though the questions abound – but one thing is always clear: I have no doubt when reading it that I’m that stranger receiving welcome – just as I have little doubt you will be equally convinced it’s you being addressed.  Making our way through the text, we take notice of that straight spine centering our attention, the lines of the sturdy ribcage we almost imagine swelling with respiration – and, perhaps most satisfying, that gentle voice assuring us that there is no need to feel estranged from this living moment.  Fred’s created here a very American version of zazen, each unscrolling breath illuminated with a bright red initial.

 

 

 

hello

          stranger

 

 

this is where

                 you enter

the poem, you’ll

                 need to take

your shoes off,

                 but not your

socks, sit as you

                 wish, cushion

or not, even on

                 a chair, but

keep the spine

                 and windpipe

aligned, upright

                 enough to draw

a straight path

                 from the base

of your being

                 to the place

the gods like

                 to touch,

that tangled nest

                 of neurons

where you have

                 imagined gods

exist, where you

                 believe in love’s

enduring kindness,

                 and in a decency

greater than mere

                 gratitude, and

as these are kin

                 to reading a poem,

you are welcome

                 here, the key is

under the mat

                 let yourself in

 

 

                          ––Fred Marchant

 

 

 

The Red Letters 3.0

 

* 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

 

and 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 Twitter          

@StevenRatiner