Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: Red Letter Poem Project

The Red Letter Poem Project

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 separate 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/3001-redletter-042321.html), 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.

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 #63

To walk the talk. In the world of business, this phrase of admiration refers to an individual who not only expresses some essential philosophical stance, but turns those concepts into concrete action. In the world of poetry, I know of few who walk the talk more determinedly, with more grace and sheer delight, than Jane Hirshfield. Her literary accomplishments include: nine volumes of poetry; three books of literary essays; a foundational anthology presenting four millennia of global women’s poetry; a much-prized co-translation from the Japanese; and frequent engagements as speaker and educator that carry her around the world. Over her four-decade-long career, Jane has proven to be a trustworthy reporter on the human condition, reflecting both the beauty and pain inherent in that experience. I’m delighted to see that her path in Alaya, published in 1982, is recognizably the same one traveled today in Ledger, her latest collection.

Of course, there’s been evolution over time: the lush music of her early lyrics has grown more crystalline, restrained. Her uncanny ability – capturing images that reveal the way the societal, material and spiritual experience of being human is, at every moment, interconnected – has become more subtle and refined. In her recent work, we still find the wise regard and depth of feeling we’ve come to expect from Hirshfield poems, but it’s joined with a new fierceness, even anger, at the continuing brutality we inflict on each other and on the planet itself. Her poem "Let Them Not Say", for example, has become something of an anthem in the movement combating climate change. Many poets write today as if the self was the only object worthy of inquiry. But art, music, science and history are braided into Jane’s curiosity and thought. Her exploration encompasses human nature, the natural world, and their interwoven fates. She’s developed a large and devoted readership, among whom I happily count myself.

The footer of Jane’s e-mails holds a quotation from another well-loved poet, Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s/ business;/ we are each other’s/ harvest;/ we are each other’s/ magnitude and bond.” The business Jane is engaged in is the very one we each should attend to if we are to live without shackling ourselves to blindness and regret: how to love the days we are given, even as they escape us; how to embrace the simple beauties we encounter, though they are fragile and fleeting; and how to honor those same desires in every living being. If we, at times, decline to pursue this enterprise – and in our busy lives, that’s easy to do – rest assured, some 48-point headline will soon come along to trumpet the latest calamity and wake us from our drowse.

Coming upon the shell of a dead cicada, the great Japanese poet Basho wrote: “he sung himself utterly away.” If Jane Hirshfield had to write a job description for the project of her poetry, I think that might come close: to continue singing until there is no more left of the instrument she was given – both voice and heart. Those who love her poetry are grateful she’s employed her talents in that pursuit.

Practice

I touch my toes.

When I was a child,

this was difficult.

Now I touch my toes daily.

In 2012, in Sanford, Florida,

someone nearby was touching her toes before bed.

Three weeks ago,

in the Philippines or Myanmar, someone was stretching.

Tomorrow, someone elsewhere will bend

first to one side, then the other.

I also do ten push-ups, morning and evening.

Women's push-ups,

from the knees.

They resemble certain forms of religious bowing.

In place of one, two, four, seven,

I count the names of incomprehension: Sanford, Ferguson,

Charleston.

Aleppo, Sarajevo, Nagasaki.

I never reach: Troy, Ur.

I have done this for years now.

Bystander, listener. One of the lucky.

I do not seem to grow stronger.

–– Jane Hirshfield

(from: Ledger; Alfred A. Knopf)

The Red Letters 2.0: When I was first appointed as Poet Laureate for Arlington, MA one of my goals was to help bring the strength and delight of poetry into unexpected settings. The Red Letter Poems Project was going to be a novel way of sharing Arlington’s poetic voices, sent off in bright red envelopes, a one-off mass mailing intended to surprise and delight. But when the Corona crisis struck, and families everywhere were suffering a fearful uncertainty in enforced isolation, I converted the idea into an e-version which has gone out weekly ever since. Because of the partnership I forged with seven organizations, mainstays of our community, the poems have been able to reach tens of thousands of readers, throughout Arlington and far beyond its borders. I hope you too are grateful that these groups stepped up and reached out: The Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture, The Arlington Center for the Arts, The Arlington Public Library, The Arlington International Film Festival, Arlington Community Education, The Council on Aging, and YourArlington.com – each of which distributes or posts the new Red Letter installments and, in many cases, provide a space where all the poems of this evolving anthology continue to be available. And I’m delighted to add our newest RLP partner: Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene – a blog that is a marvelous poetry resource.

But now we are experiencing a triple pandemic: the rapid spread of the Covid virus, which then created an economic catastrophe, and served to further expose our long-standing crises around race and social justice. My hope is to have the Red Letters continue as a forum for poetic voices – from Arlington and all of the Commonwealth – that will help us gain perspective on where we are at this crucial moment and how we envision a healing will emerge. So please: pass the word, submit new poems, continue sharing the installments with your own e-lists and social media sites (#RedLetterPoems, #ArlingtonPoetLaureate, #SeeingBeyondCorona), and help further the conversation. Art-making has always been the way we human beings reflect on what is around us, work to alter our circumstances, and dream of what may still be possible. In its own small way, the Red Letters intends to draw upon our deepest voices to promote just such a healing and share our enduring hope for something better.

If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your in-box plus notices about future poetry events, send an e-mail to: steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com with the subject line ‘mailing list’.

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 #56

Elizabeth Bishop – one of America’s great poets – remained deeply skeptical of the very artform to which she devoted her life. She feared its tendency toward pretense, posturing, imaginative self-deception. In an essay, she declared: “Writing poetry is an unnatural act. It takes great skill to make it seem natural…“. I think, then, she’d have been intrigued and heartened by the work of Chen Chen, a young poet who is currently making literary waves. His debut collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions) won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award; and his writing has brought him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kundiman and Saltonstall Foundations, and Lambda Literary. A scion of Frank O’Hara and his ‘walking around poems’, Chen Chen invites the reader onto the emotional rollercoaster ride that is his inner monologue. Written in a kind of fevered vernacular, the poems are by turns playful, puzzling, startling, and always wildly imaginative. The poet himself has commented in interviews that “I forget how sad some of my poems are because people tend to point out the humor.” But we are so much more willing to take those emotional plunges because of the bracing momentum he’s created, his unspoken belief that the ride is far from over and more breathless surprises await.

Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence. In his poetry, he writes about family – both the one he was born into and that sense of the familial he endeavors to create. Poems touch on the cross-cultural riptides of being a gay Asian male in a society not always hospitable to those qualities. But above all, I think Chen Chen’s work is about joy, in all its manifestations: those all-too-rare skyfuls of fireworks and the diminutive sparkle of the everyday. In his poem “Spell to Find Family”, he writes: “My job is to trick// myself into believing/ there are new ways/ to find impossible honey.” And he performs this trick with deftness and aplomb. Ms. Bishop would approve.

Self-Portrait as So Much Potential

Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.

As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.

Realizing I hate the word “sip.”

But that’s all I do.

I drink. So slowly.

& say I’m tasting it. When I’m just bad at taking in liquid.

I’m no mango or tomato. I’m a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I’m an

arctic attic.

Come amble & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.

I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.

I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on