Red Letter Poem #111 Martín Espada

 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 #111

 

 

 

It’s as American as apple pie, as baseball, as Fourth of July: racism.  Isn’t it mind-boggling that a nation conceived by beleaguered people seeking a better world – whose founding document states unequivocally that all men are created equal – can have braided within its history some of the most glorious and egregious moments imaginable?  Perhaps it’s the very contradiction of the human soul – that we contain the voices of those ‘better angels’ and well as the snarl of bitterness that sometimes erupts when confronting the other (when constructing the idea that the other actually exists, and needs to be feared, attacked.)  That some people would like to forbid us from even examining and learning from our past – are, in fact, too consumed by fear to allow their children to risk being exposed to the truth – as I said, the mind reels.  But does not retreat.  Perhaps that’s what poets are for.

 

Case in point: Martín Espada who, over the course of four decades, has become an indispensable American voice bringing us – in fifteen collections of poetry, not to mention translations, essays and anthologies – the hard truths, the hard-fought struggles, and the enduring beauty of our national experience.  The list of Martín’s honors unscrolls like a cash register slip from CVS: the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the Shelley Memorial Award, the American Book Award, the 2018 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for a lifetime’s achievement.  So we should not be surprised that his most recent collection, Floaters (from W. W. Norton & Co. and which, I’m happy to report, was just released in paperback this week), was the winner of the 2021 National Book Award.  I interviewed Martín many decades ago when he was just starting out and, ever since, his poetry readings are among the ones I seek out repeatedly for the chance to be challenged and revitalized by his Whitmanesque imagination.  This is what signifies to me the career of a great poet: how often he or she forces you to reevaluate your favorite book choice among their oeuvre.  Floaters – with its harrowing poems about immigration and class struggle, its devastating lyrics about love, friendship, and the way fathers carve out a mountain-sized place in our consciousness – has just claimed that top spot.  And so I’m pleased the poet has allowed me to share another from that collection with our Red Letter readers.  This selection seems at first not to be one of his grand societal broadsides; instead, it has the quiet voice, the vulnerable heart of, well, a child.  But thinking back to my own boyhood, what is, in fact, more monumental than discovering the delight of the body via sport; than first falling in love; than discovering the world may not be as you thought (imagined? desired?) it would be?  And yet there is something honest and vital within such heartache; something valuable in posing unanswerable questions; and certainly something worth savoring when we speak out (as poets do) and affirm that we are not alone in all this.  “Asking Questions of the Moon” contains both a sucker punch and a caress.  Reading it, you may feel yourself alone in the vast field watching the baseball (or the spring moon, or the heart of a poet) plummeting toward your upraised glove.  Trying to catch what the world offers us – the best and, yes, the worst; being willing to face the hard facts of existence, and survive with our hearts intact.  What’s more American than that?

 

 

 

Asking Questions of the Moon





Some blind girls

ask questions of the moon

and spirals of weeping

rise through the air.

­––Federico García Lorca





As a boy, I stood guard in right field, lazily punching my glove,

keeping watch over the ballgame and the moon as it rose

from the infield, asking questions of the moon about the girl

with long blonde hair in the back of my classroom, who sat with me

when no one else would, who talked to me when no one else would,

who laughed at my jokes when no one else would, until the day

her friend sat beside us and whispered to her behind that long hair,

and the girl asked me, as softly as she could: Are you a spic?

And I, with a hive of words in my head, could only think to say:

Yes, I am. She never spoke to me again, and as I thought of her

in the outfield the moon fell from the sky, tore through the webbing

of my glove, and smacked me in the eye. Blinded, I wept, kicked

the moon at my feet, and loudly blamed the webbing of my glove.





– Martín Espada

 

 

 

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

 

* 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/3132-redletter-040822

 

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

 

Doug and Dianne/ Filmed by Paul Steven Stone

The Invisible Borders of Time: Five Female Latin American Poets Edited by Nidia Hernández

 

"The Invisible Borders of Time..." Edited by Nidia Hernández ( Arrowsmith Press) $24.

Review by Hecmely Ferreiras

In an anthology of emotionally captivating poems, I was introduced to five female Latin American poets. These poets have carefully, yet effortlessly captured similar themes of motherhood, dreams, and quiet sadness. I enjoyed reading the Spanish versions of each poem and comparing how the English translations somehow miss out on a bit of the passion and intensity that the Spanish tongue offers. I chose two poems from each author to analyze and digest the depths of each line.

The first poet featured in this book is Cristina Peri Rossi. Peri Rossi is an Uruguayan poet whose romantic tone transports you into the scene of her words. As she said, “poetry is a perception, a state of mind”. Her poems offer a journey to a state of mind that she sets up in each line. In an untitled poem, the speaker recounts an unrequited love in which their partner is no longer with them. The last few lines spoke to me; “Excuse me, the literature killed me, but you looked so much like it.” This line brought a sense of reality as if the speaker was aware that their memories and desires are just words in a poem, and it killed them because those words reminded them of their lover. The next poem by Cristina Peri Rossi was difficult for me to understand. It wasn’t until the final line that I understood that the poem “Auto-da-fe” was leading to “I love you”. The lines describe mostly negative things mixed with beauty like “with destroyed palaces whose magnificent ruin we admire.” Peri Rossi sends the message that love is complex and lacks simplicity.

Piedad Bonnett is a Columbian poet that writes poems to express herself in that very moment. I agree with her that “there are things that only poetry can say”. You can hear the sorrow in her poems along with her strength. I can only imagine that poetry must have been a comfortable source after Bonnett lost her son in 2013. The poem “Guarding”, spoke to me in many ways. I interpreted it that the speaker has put a guard up to protect themselves, whether they realize it or not. The poem has a sad but also a hopeful tone. The speaker realizes that they have put up a wall and is aware that they are sad, but still remain fierce. The next poem I looked at by Piedad Bonnett is called “Kitchen”. The poem was dedicated to Maria Victoria. The poem centers on two mothers who talk “as if there were children asleep upstairs” but in reality, there was no one. It seems as if the two mothers were reminiscing about a time when kids were running around and playing music. The two mothers comfort each other with their losses. This poem in particular reminds me of the mothers with angels in my life. I recall a time when my family was gathered for Christmas and each woman in the room shared a story of the child they lost. Similar to Bonnett’s poem, their loss provided “a bridge that united them, their hands holding on to the emptiness.”

Yolanda Pantin is a distinguished poet of Venezuela. Her dreamy poems offer an escape from reality and into the descriptive scenery Pantin displays. The poem “Déjà vu” speaks about a dream in which the speaker was writing in a notebook. The speaker asks, “what were you for me, then, poetry?” In the dream, the speaker was a horse searching for the answers and found them in a notebook that said: “a, e, i,”. The last line reminded me of elementary Spanish class where I would recite the vowels “a, e, i, o, u”. At first glance, the reader may think, how are three letters the answer they’ve been looking for? It is because poetry is like vowels. You cannot live without it or speak without it. It flows naturally and there is no way to force a sentence without vowels. It made sense to me that poetry is like life support as vowels are to a complete sentence. The poem “Guerrero” is a short poem about the soul of a house. The English version of this poem confused me because at first, but after reading it in Spanish I interpret it as the soul of the house is protected and protective of others. This poem reminds me of the comfort of an ancient house.

Carmen Boullosa is a Mexican author and poet. When reading her poems, I noticed the amount of description that delicately puzzles together into an image in your mind. In an untitled poem, Boullosa described the night as an “unmoved, peaceful skein of sound, large impenetrable serenity”. The soft tone sets a calming mood that is homey and comfortable. In the last line, the speaker says that the night covers them “in the presence of clarity without borders”. As someone who loves her country, I can only imagine that Boullosa writes about the Mexican night sky that is tranquil and silent. It reminds me of the nights in the Dominican Republic that are so rich in stars, incomparable to the smog-filled city in America that is always alive in the nighttime. This poem gave me sweet nostalgia and for a brief moment, I was in the presence of the unmoved night. When I first read the poem, “Vein”, I instantly had the thought that it was alluding to the destruction of the earth. The “wound, incision, cut” to me relates to all the times we have hurt the earth. The last line sets a negative tone with the words “viscous, rotten, permanent, poisoned” to describe the open wound. It may not allude to the tarnished earth but it resonated with the impeding planet we remain on and continue to harm.

Rossella Di Paolo is a Peruvian poet and teacher. I agree with Di Paolo when she states that “poetry gives shape (language and music) to the chaos that we all are and because of that we feel less perplexed, less alone”. The poem “Fifteen Hundred” includes descriptive words of a goat climbing uphill. My favorite line is “a thorny sun that scratches my eyes. Like a lightning bolt of dust I grow”. The impressive play on words brings me a sense of joy. The last poem I looked at is called “leave if you can II”. This poem personifies poetry in a way that I can relate to. There are times when you are in love with poetry but other times when you want to remove yourself from the endless thoughts, lines, and rhymes cluttering your head. I love the line “I surrender always because I live in the house of poetry”. Poetry is always something I come back to. It is always in my head when I feel intense emotions or when I tune into the lyrical genius of my favorite rappers. Poetry is a fantasy and an inescapable reality. It can be overwhelming at times, but I am always drawn to it.

Ultimately these poems have shown me that poetry comes in all shapes, sizes, and lengths. The featured poets in this book have reminded me of myself, my culture, and my connection to poetry. I am glad I am not the only one that thinks of poetry as a companion that we can confide in to express our emotions or just lay out our thoughts.

****** Hecmely Ferreiras is an undergraduate writer at Endicott College

Red Letter Poem #110

 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 #110

 

 

This is one of the things I love most about poetry: there isn’t a single rule, aesthetic stricture, established formulation, honored tradition – no matter how critically revered or widely practiced – for which I can’t offer you an example of a poet who violated said rule in order to achieve a successful poem.  Perhaps that is poetry’s ‘prime directive’: once a new poem begins to announce itself inside your consciousness, do anything – no matter how devilishly subtle or lavishly irregular – if (and I must stress that sense of necessity) it helps you to bring that dynamic vision, that singular music to the page.

 

One of those ‘best practices’ young poets learn in writing classes: don’t beat around the bush. You should move directly into the heart of the subject; don’t sacrifice clarity or economy of expression by allowing the poem’s attention to wander.  After all, how can you expect a reader to be moved if the poem indulges in detour or distraction?  Well, tell that to acclaimed poets like Frank O’Hara or Ruth Stone, Philip Levine or Wislawa Szymborska – who each seemed to make detours into an art form, creating a new experience of consciousness within poetry by mimicking the way our minds often meander, subvert and, seemingly, stumble upon a more meaningful destination than the conventional one sighted at the outset.  Jennifer Garfield – another fine poet making Arlington her home – has her own version of such anomalous behavior, often second-guessing herself within the poem, challenging her own perceptions, only to offer at the end some realization, some unexpected clarity made more satisfying for the circuitous route that brought us there.  If I tell you a poem entitled “Spring” contains baby bunnies and tulips, I’m sure you have some immediate and Hallmark-like expectations about the piece in question.  But this poet continually undercuts our assumptions and, in doing so, reminds us of our own doubts and insecurities, our often-formless craving for clear emotional resolutions in a world where such things are, at the least, problematic if not downright impossible.  Jennifer has published poetry in such journals as The Threepenny Review, Frontier Poetry, Sugarhouse Review, and Salamander, and was recently featured in Mass Poetry’s Hard Work of Hope series.  She’s also the recipient of The Martha's Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing Parent-Writer Fellowship.  She’s one of those poets whose voice and vision seem desultory and eccentric – and then, after a few readings, inevitable and strangely trustworthy.

 

So if spring is a time of rebirth and renewal, shouldn’t a spring poem take Ezra Pound’s directive to heart – “make it new!” – and uncover what unimagined moments might be blooming inside even everyday consciousness?  And if new poems seem to sprout each May, attempting to honor both the season and, of course, Mother’s Day, I’d gladly help myself to ones as mysterious and honestly self-reflective as Jennifer’s.  Her “Spring” produces both a smile and a wince, and makes me grateful to have endured another winter.

 

 

 

Spring

 

 

There are baby bunnies in our neighbor’s yard 

hiding behind an old ladder. I watch them 

while doing dishes and think to show my own kids 

 

the miracle of spring, but I don’t. You are a bad mother, 

the voice in my head says. It sounds a lot like 

my own mother. I turn her words into statues 

 

and arrange them in the garden. Bunnies hop 

over syllables, unbothered by their tone and history. 

Can I not be wild without strumming my list 

 

of failures? Let me admire someone else’s flowers, 

not mine, I don’t know how to make things grow. 

Yet somehow the kids keep sprouting, 

 

even when I keep the bunnies to myself 

for reasons I can’t explain, and don’t you see? 

Spring really is meant for poetry. Or poetry 

 

is meant for spring. Or I’ve been stuck inside

too long and willing to mistake any damn season 

for spring. I forgot to mention the tulips 

 

and the pink blossoms

on our tree, opening their hearts

to no one but the sky. 

 

 

                         – Jennifer Garfield

 

 

 

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

 

* 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/3132-redletter-040822

 

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