Red Letter Poem #256

 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 #256

 

 

 

 

Waypoint

Dinner over, we went outside

to smoke, glasses in hand, abstract

sphinxes at loose ends.

The conversation didn’t gel.



The silence stretched to ache

until we spoke of the Romantics,

of Lake Country loam, and silage.

Of Coleridge coining soulmate, narcissist,

of rags and bones stored high in haylofts.

Of spleen, and grace, and grief.

Of what thoughts point toward.



––Wyn Cooper




“In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.”



––T. S. Eliot:

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”



My friend Michael––a medical doctor but with broad academic interests––is fond of the term overdetermined. The concept has roots in mathematics, psychology, and anthropological studies, and refers to a situation where a single observed effect can be achieved through a whole range of possible causes. But, as the word is used by literary critics like I.A. Richards, in his 'context theorem of meaning,' the notion is intended to highlight the importance of ambiguity in a work of art. “Freud taught us that a dream may mean a dozen different things; he has persuaded us that some symbols are, as he says, 'over-determined' and mean many different selections from among their causes.” Considering that Wyn Cooper’s poems are built on concrete, closely-observed images, his verse manages to shimmer with overdetermination. As with a mirage in the desert, we see and experience something as we approach the oasis, only to have it change or vanish altogether the closer we get. What remains afterward, though, is a kind of thirst for the well of meaning we sense is there, just beyond our reach. And the deeper our journey into the poem’s terrain, the thirst only increases. Yet in the alluring perhaps of his poetry, we often discover something about what was driving our emotional yearning in the first place.



It would be misguided to impose, through one of my commentaries, my singular perspective on any Red Letter poem. But I hope that––by offering a glimpse of how I find myself engaged with, confounded by, welcomed into a poet’s little ink-universe––I might hint at the possibility of veiled passageways, of unforeseen destinations, some that didn’t even exist in the reader’s mind before their eyes began pacing across the poem’s opening lines. And so, at the start of “Waypoint,” I found myself imagining the sort of gathering depicted here: a dinner party? A literary celebration? A wedding? A funeral? And as the guests meander outside “to smoke, glasses in hand, abstract/ sphinxes at loose ends” we encounter the social awkwardness familiar to most of us: after all, what can be said among people who don’t really know each other? In my experience, that feeling of being adrift is especially unsettling in an intellectual crowd (and of course most poets are intellectuals, though some might claim otherwise.) In this instance, somehow the English Romantic poets pop up as a subject of conversation––and I can’t help noticing how the music of the poem intensifies (ache, and spoke, and Lake.) Now we’re thinking about the Lake District in Cumbria, Coleridge and Wordsworth, the entrancing power of the natural world and our desire (and often inability) to feel at home there. Language itself is part of this human landscape––and since Wyn mentions soulmate and narcissist, I find myself desiring the former (casting about, perhaps, among this gathering?) but fearful of the latter (to be cornered in conversation by some self-consumed bore or, even more terrifying, to discover that I am one.)



Then, amid a range of possibilities like grace and grief, the poet slides one final, unassuming thought into our consciousness: “Of what thoughts point toward.” And after countless readings of this poem, I’ve yet to make up my mind about where that leaves us. Are we witnessing the fatuous attempts of our fragile consciousness to latch onto something, to keep from going under––like Eliot’s aristocratic women blithely talking about great art? Or are we finally allowing the world in (I was picturing towering pine trees, scattered stars across a night sky), and experiencing some of the encompassing delight that the Romantics wrote about? Are these shared thoughts rising higher (along with the smoke trails from our cigarettes), reminding us that our lives here might indeed be at a waypoint between existence and. . .well, whatever waits for us beyond this all-too-brief lifetime? Or are words only a pathway back inside the labyrinthian mind––the only true beyond we’ll ever know being our opaque selves? As a poet, Wyn is assured enough not to cross out any possibility but to offer, in that gentle ambiguity, the impetus to keep questioning. This poem, I’m happy to say, will be included in his sixth collection, The Unraveling, which will appear in 2026 from White Pine Press. He also recently enjoyed the surprise––and splendid honor––of opening a copy of the new anthology, A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker, and finding his work included. Wyn’s poised and enigmatic poems conjure their own version of “the mermaids singing, each to each”––only, after a second or third reading, those, voices begin to resemble our own.

 

 

 

 

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

 

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 BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

And coming soon:

a new website to house all the Red Letter archives at StevenRatiner.com

Red Letter Poem #226

  

Red Letter Poem #226

 

 

 

 

 

Tango


My wristband tight as a tourniquet,

my reptile skin windswept, dry as dust.

My glasses fogged by someone else’s breath.



My passport in a pocket where my hand

should go but won’t for fear of change.



The song a tango from below the border

that divides us, keeps us at arm’s length,

line drawn in sand that blows in our eyes.







––Wyn Cooper





Mary Oliver was once asked by a reader what a certain poem ‘was about’––and her answer came quickly: “commas.” She explained to me sometime later that she was not being flippant––the poem in question became, during the long revision process, a marvelous experiment in the use of commas for spacing, bundling thought, regulating breath. This memory came to mind because, if someone asked me what Wyn Cooper’s new Red Letter poem “Tango” was about, I’d be tempted to respond: T’s. Just listen to the spree of those hard consonants––seven in the first two lines!––like the rhythmic clacking of the claves as a Latin band swings into gear. In a poem named after a South American dance, it should not be surprising that the poet would have an inner soundtrack propelling the language.



But widening my purview, I find myself fascinated by a quality in many of Wyn’s poems: they feel like mini-cinemas in which we readers have arrived in our seats sometime after the first reel. We are quickly trying to catch up, fill in the narrative, speculate about the protagonist and where the movie is leading us. In the case of “Tango”, the film feels a little noir-ish, what with that “reptile skin,” fogged-over glasses, and “someone else’s breath” so close and intimate we’re feeling both aroused and exposed. But when the speaker mentions “below the border/ that divides us,” a soupçon of political intrigue enters the picture. As we approach what is surely one of the most divisive elections in American history, the very word border is fraught; and who and what we permit to cross our boundaries––let alone into our hearts and minds––becomes a matter of greater consequence. When I was young, I always loved how characters like those Humphrey Bogart often played––rugged individualists who could somehow feel enamored by and completely at ease in many cultures and locales––made me imagine a world without all those “line(s) drawn in sand” intended to separate peoples––blown sand, Wyn points out, that ultimately serve only to blind us. In those films, the dignity and imaginative freedom every character craved pointed toward a commonality I’d not heard spoken of in my public education. The very notion of a world with flexible borders and intermingling ideas seems painfully naïve these days. But elusive things like music, poetry, dreams still somehow find a way to subvert governments, slip past checkpoints, and bring us their stories, their truths.



Wyn is the author of five collections of poetry––the most recent being Mars Poetica (White Pine Press)––and the novel Way Out West (Concord Free Press.) His poems, stories, essays, and reviews––in accordance with today’s poem––have had their passports stamped by scores of publications such as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, AGNI, and more. He is also the co-creator of two fascinating recordings featuring the voice of the novelist Madison Smartt Bell. And speaking of crossing boundaries: his poem “Fun” was the basis for the Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow. It pleases me to think of contemporary poetry, in all its complexity, making its way into so many unsuspecting ears. When our dance partner is graceful, inventive, quietly assured, how can we help but be swept away?

 

 

 

 

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 #207

 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 #207

 

 

 

 

 

Along the Coast

 

 

Though the science is uncertain   

the molecules feel more chaotic here,

the acrid smell of empty vessels                        

heavy on everyone’s mind.

 

                                   Plastic swirls,      

bounces on waves—nothing can

contain it.  It follows the currents

that course toward the equator,

belt that threatens to burst.       

                                           

The chop of surf unsettles us

yet somehow slows our hearts,   

more certain now of—dare I say it?—

death. But that would be too obvious.

 

                                    And so,

in vinyl chairs unraveling,

their strands adrift in brackish air,

we sit in silence as doorless Jeeps

drive slowly along the graveled beach,

half the air let out of their tires.

 

 

                        ––Wyn Cooper

 

 

Perhaps you’ve heard of it: a newly-formed island adrift between Hawaii and California, with an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers.  That’s twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France.  It’s called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch––the largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world.  But it’s only one of five such floating trash conglomerates bedeviling our seas––yet more proof (as if further proof were needed) of how our ecological blindness has allowed us to bring our planet to the brink of disaster.  More than a half-century has passed since we received the first image of our lovely blue-green home, diminutive in the vastness of space, as humans gazed back from the Lunar surface.  And it’s been nearly as long since the first Earth Day celebration was created––largely in response to this celestial event––hoping to generate a planetary commitment to safeguard our fragile environment.  Yet we remain as short-sighted as ever, allowing political deceit, corporate profits, and our commitment to own material ease to outweigh the dire warnings from the scientific community.  Oceans become polluted, air is fouled, drinking water tainted, and the man-made effects of global warming threaten destruction on an unimagined scale.

 

So how are we to process this?  And how might one individual poet respond?  In Wyn Cooper’s new poem, we find ourselves joining him on some unspecified shore, gazing at the once-unsullied ocean, seated on our (oh-so-ironic) plastic chairs.  We sense the resonance between personal trauma and that of the wider world.  How far away is this scene from the sort of Mad Max dystopia that sometimes troubles our sleep––where natural resources are so depleted, survival is a matter of every-man-or-woman-for-themselves?  The poet presents us with this ecological fever-dream, perhaps in hope of a shared moment of recognition; the poem is a dramatic vantage point from which to marvel at what’s befallen us.  I always relish the bracing imagery, dark humor, edgy syntax, with which Wyn shapes his poetic visions.  Midway into one of his texts, we’ll often feel ourselves suddenly on the psychic hot seat, the rising electrical jolt enough to startle our complacent minds.  Or, at least, that is the hope: that the quiet intensity of a poem might get under our skins in ways the news headlines clearly have not.

 

Wyn is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent being Mars Poetica (White Pine Press), as well as the novel Way Out West published by Concord Free Press.  His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in scores of publications such as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and AGNI.  But his lyricism has carried him into songwriting as well, with a pair of recordings featuring the voice of the novelist Madison Smartt Bell.  There’s no telling where his poems might travel: “Fun”, from his debut collection, was turned into the Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow.  A committed educator as well, Wyn has taught at Bennington and Marlboro Colleges, the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, the University of Utah, and the Frost Place.  It is a bittersweet pleasure to share his new work, wondering whether mere language is still capable of prying open the heart.  I’m sure you, too, are praying each one of us will realize that we’ve no choice but to shape our actions in order to become part of the solution––even as we pressure our leaders to finally make good on decades of empty promises.  Facing this Goliath of a challenge, even a mere poem can be a stone in our sling. May it come about before (as the poet suggests) the planet’s equatorial belt finally does burst, leaving us all naked, un-homed, and cursed by hindsight.

 

 

 

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