For poet Joyce Wilson: " The Morning After Burns Night"

 

Recently I had the pleasure to interview New England Poetry Club advisory board member Joyce Wilson about her new book of poetry " The Morning After Burns Night."

 Joyce Wilson is editor of The Poetry Porch (www.poetryporch.com), a literary magazine on the Internet since 1997. She has taught English at Boston University and Suffolk University, about ten years each. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, among them Alabama Literary Review, Classical Outlook, and The Hudson Review. She has published four books of poetry: The Etymology of Spruce, The Springhouse 3, The Need for a Bridge, and Take and Receive. Her most recent poetry collection is The Morning after Burns Night, appearing in summer 2026.

The title of this book THE MORNING AFTER BURNS NIGHT, is intriguing. It seems when we experience the 3AM dark night of the soul—the morning sun burns through our malaise...with a new perspective. Do you feel your poetry collection is hopeful?

About the creation of The Morning after Burns Night: The first poem sets the scene of a party for Robert Burns, whose birthday falls on January 25, and is a traditional winter date for dinners and celebrations. My husband and I hosted such a gathering a few years ago with a pot-luck buffet, readings of poetry, and performances of songs. It was a memorable evening and left me with a feeling of fondness for all my friends and a sense of connection to our place in a sometimes crazy world.

So when I had enough poems to fill a book, I thought I might lead with a poem about our winter celebration. I grouped the incidental poems, in a variety of forms (sonnets, blank verse, limericks, prose poems) and on a variety of topics (winter, the behavior of animals, states of mind) that the partygoers might have shared in verse to entertain themselves that night. Like the speakers, some poems address singles, some pairs, the morning after, and the night before. That introductory poem ends this way:

We introduced our poems and our verses

about our friends, the ones both here and gone,

and pairs of things, like lovers’ vows and curses,

without regret, from now, and from now on.

Not reflective and soul searching, but communal and commemorative, and hopeful, yes, that we will remember these times and the people close to us for "auld lange syne," or for old time's sake.

There are two other sections in the book. One, a sonnet crown sequence "The Remnant of His Life," is about a woman who bathes her husband's body after death as a way of saying good-bye. This idea is based on the D. H. Lawrence story "Odor of Chrysanthemums," which is about the death of miner in a village in the midlands of Great Britain, and how the wife and mother prepare his body for burial.

And there is the final section about travelling through the Middle Eastern country of Lebanon where we explored my husband's roots, and where our daughter ended up living, working, marrying, and starting a family. I got obsessed with the cedars of Lebanon and the phrase "The Cedars know the history of the earth better than history itself."

In your new collection, your connection to nature is very profound. You live on a farm—so you have a certain intimacy with it that many folks don't have. You interact with it, glean meaning, can interpret its silence. Do you feel you are one with nature?

Live on a farm? Ha! We occupy one acre. Our daughter always called it a mini-farm, as if we were pretending to be farmers and only succeeded in a small way. That is somewhat accurate. Our home is in the suburban coastal town of Scituate, on the South Shore of Boston, where the property came with a chicken coop and a lot attached with space for a big vegetable garden (the size of a tennis court). We have maintained those original fixtures. And part of me is devoted to farming activities and living close to nature after I grew up in a similar setting in Pennsylvania, south of Philadelphia. So I prefer living in close proximity to nature, rather than in urban environments. But I am an observer. To be one with nature is impossible: the weather is always changing, the animals passing through are adorable one minute, and then they're killing each other the next. It's hot and then cold, one day a delight to be outside and then the next a real danger when a storm comes up unexpectedly.

Some of your poems have turkeys in them. You paint these awkward birds as having a sense of nobility about them. There is grandeur in this "...top-heavy, self-respecting..." bird. It makes me think of the concept of ugly beauty. Your take?

Yes, ugly beauty is exactly right. I wrote two poems about turkeys, and these are wild turkeys, not domestic, and I was struggling not to rant about their intrusiveness, when one morning we found sixty in our front yard! Still, I kept thinking of the phrase "The poor will always be with us," in which we are repulsed by the vision of indignity and need. Do our feelings come from their lack of beauty or our ignorance of it? In the poem "Wild Turkeys Return," I address their awkwardness as a sign of renewal.

Wild Turkeys Return

High-shouldered and bony, they venture near.

Their awkwardness apparent in their walk,

They stand too big to hide, too shy to talk

Yet chirrup to dissuade us of our fear.

As they survey this wind-swept acre’s lawn,

We ask ourselves what messages they bear

And what our duties are, if we should dare

To shoo them back to woods, their rightful home,

If we should seek the lessons they might teach,

That once exiled they now return in force

To take their place and reclaim what was theirs.

We watch them slowly draggle out of reach.

We want to love them, on whom much depends—

Our gratitude for nature, sunlight’s jewel,

The notion that their coming means renewal—

A second chance for us, their awkward friends.

In another poem, I was fascinated by the male Tom turkey in particular, how, when he fans his tail, he appears "top-heavy, self-respecting," much like Benjamin Franklin, who wanted to make the wild turkey the national bird, rather than the eagle, which he deemed too war-like.

You write of harvesting grapes...the "temporary of this world" You trace the grapes' growth, then harvest them, cook, and consume them. This seems to follow our trajectory of life, death, and infinity. You make the common grape a sacred sage of sorts. Your thoughts?

In that poem "A Recipe for Gratitude," I wanted to describe the process of making jelly from grapes, and tending the vines, and living in a neighborhood, and observing the changing seasons as a way to give thanks to the natural world by playing a part in it. Must we relate to nature by assuming these roles of sowing and harvesting? Emerson found much in nature to be divine. I'm still working out that kind of devotion.

Why should we read this book?

I hope readers will come to this book with a curiosity about the subjects of the poems: Burns Night and yearly celebration, the need to connect with the reality of death and dying, the state of affairs in Lebanon and the Middle East. I hope they will come away with an appreciation of poetic forms, the tradition of poetry and song, and our need to maintain connections with one another. I dedicate the book "for the unrequited" with the notion in mind that we are all seeking responses from the ones we love, some of whom are out of reach, or are otherwise repulsive and unreachable. Some we barely know because of the distances between us. We cannot hope to complete the circle of our bond in its implied perfection in this world but must continue to seek its embrace.

Red Letter Poem #307

 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 #307

 

 

 

 

American Flags at the Recycling Center

 

 

They rest, discarded heaps of worn-out cloth,

white stars on blue above red stripes on white,

off to the side, and with the better trash,

where our recycled goods accumulate.



These cloths too worn to be restitched, each one

a flag, no longer useful for a cause,

but ready for a casket, four by four,

and on the lid, the words RETIRED FLAGS.



They built this wooden chest to store the flags.

The time would come to start the ritual

when each would be disposed with dignity

to yield its precious substance into fire,



to be reborn, a living flag, and flown

from June till Labor Day, all-weather flag

revered through storms and bitter times,

reminder of the past, when some of us



had scorned the flag and that for which it stood,

had raised its mast in anger, pride, protest,

to bear it through the streets, or wave from cabs

until its hems were loosed and frayed like fringe.



Some cut it down, some dared to cut it up.

I restitched mine, a square of it, to patch

the rips that scarred my precious Wrangler jeans,

then found the jeans were suddenly outgrown.



But not my memory of summer camp,

which gave each Scout a chance to hold the flag,

unfurl and raise it up, to hear the cords

and clips that snapped against the metal pole,



to join the circle gathering again

at end of day, with prayer and trumpet’s “Taps,”

to help with lowering, to fold lengthwise,

then over-and-over, making triangles.

 

                                         ––Joyce Wilson

 

 

                       

 

 

 

We are all honoring our country’s 250^th anniversary––and well we should.  There are many things that have been achieved through this grand American experiment that have been nowhere duplicated in the history of mankind.  But there are forces currently emanating from Washington DC that are attempting to expunge any and all of the darker aspects of our history––as if platitudes, fireworks, and star-spangled illusions could be enough to sustain a people.  This effort not only dishonors the actual lived experience of the men and women who worked and sacrificed over the centuries to bring us to this celebratory moment, but it would blind us to the very knowledge you and I will need as we try to move forward.  Our responsibility requires of us a continual effort to create that “more perfect union” the Founders spoke of (and in a democracy, what is more vital than that?)  My suggestion: to read as much and as widely as we possibly can––history, journalism, commentary, poetry––by writers considering all the aspects of this revolutionary journey.  Then we can each take our bearings and advocate for what seems most vital––but out of many disparate (yet respectful) voices, some unified path forward may still emerge––because our commonality far outweighs our differences.  Walt Whitman proclaimed: “I CELEBRATE myself”––creating a persona that embodied a grand and inclusive American consciousness––“And what I assume you shall assume,/ For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”  I must believe in that––even while issues about race, religious belief, family background, political persuasion continue to rage.  It’s the only possible way we can endure.

 

Joyce Wilson is offering us some small-h history in her new poem––the kind most of us participate in daily.  It’s set in that most humble of civic spaces: the recycling center, where old discards hope to find new life.  The United States Flag Code (4 U.S. Code, 5-10) is a set of federal guidelines for the proper display, handling, and respect of the American flag.  It’s legally binding for any governmental agency, though only a suggestion to the rest of the citizenry.  For example, it specifies that the flag is never to be used for articles of clothing, as decoration, or advertising material––but you don’t need me to tell you how that stricture is widely ignored.  You’ll see Old Glory turned into scarves and hats and blazers by folks who deem themselves quite patriotic.  But I also remember, during the Vietnam War, how young people patched ragged jeans with the stars and stripes as a sign of opposition to a futile war––just as the speaker inside today’s poem has done.  Each constituency probably regarded the other’s gesture with disdain.  The code also specifies when and how a banner may be repaired––and under what conditions it must be respectfully destroyed, usually through burning or burial.  And yet, in countless instances, burning the American flag was a gesture of, not honor, but vehement protest.  Despite our troubled history, the speaker in this poem takes a moment to admire the chest (“casket”) built to contain these retired flags before they will meet their end.  The poet imagines these banners turned into smoke, into “a living flag. . .revered through storms and bitter times,/ reminder of the past.”

 

Joyce is the author of five poetry collections, including Take and Receive, and the new The Morning After Burns Night (both from Kelsay Books).  She is the editor of The Poetry Porch, an Internet literary magazine founded 1997 that maintains a large and enthusiastic following.  Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals including The Hudson Review, Poetry Ireland, and Salamander.  She’s taught English at Suffolk and Boston Universities.  Since I lived through the eras Joyce is calling to mind, I was intrigued by how these simple vignettes seem to amount to a much larger American portrait.  We can feel the national distress in words like discarded, worn-out, and the better trash; there’s even the overarching drive of capitalism to turn every idea or image into profit (my precious Wrangler jeans).  But she closes the poem by returning to an older memory: Summer camp, Taps, and the cords and clips clanking against the metal flagpole.  She is relishing the experience of that unifying circle, gathering at the end of day with prayers and stirring songs.  It offers us a child’s sense of connectedness––something many of us remember wistfully––of times when we shared a common sense of belonging beneath the rippling shadow from our flag.  Has that been made impossible by the political vitriol we heap upon one another?  Is the very idea this country embodies too tattered and torn to be repaired?  Are flames our only destiny?  I don’t believe that’s inevitable (though I’ve been called naïve before), and my suspicion is that you share my feeling.  So the question before us is straightforward: what are we prepared to do about it?

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

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