Doug Holder interviews Lynne Viti about her new poetry collection "The ...

Red Letter Poem #133

 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 #133

 

 

 

 

“The Way that can be told in words is not the true Way.”  So begins (paradoxically) Lao Tsu’s seminal Taoist text, Tao Te Ching – penned six centuries before (what a Christian scholar might refer to as) ‘the Common Era.’  In Judaism, Adonai or Hashem are not the true (and unknowable) names of God – they are placeholders marking an entry point into mystery.  It is, in fact, a common element in many mystical traditions: that what one sees directly may not represent the essential spirit of the matter; and perhaps, looking away, some ineffable hint of knowing begins to take hold. 

 

Jack Stewart is a talented poet with a keen interest in stories, both ancient and modern, religious and secular. His poems often begin with a received narrative – whether Biblical, artistic, historical, or personal; but he only indirectly explores this subject matter, trying to find out instead something about what the story has left out, obscured, or could never  grasp in the first place.  But even in his poems with overtly religious themes, he has little interest in arriving at easy formulations or established truths.  If there is anything doctrinal in his writing, it appears to be his faith in clear images as a window into both the surrounding landscape and the mind’s enigmatic terrain.  But, of course, the pleasure lies in the journey, not the arrival – and in poems like today’s installment, the poet clearly situates us within his scene and, at the same time, prompts us to long for what is quietly felt as absence or (though the term is over-used) the possibility of transcendence.

 

Jack published his first collection in 2020 -- No Reason, from the Poeima Poetry Series.  He’s had work appear in fine journals like Poetry, Iowa Review, and New York Quarterly – but also appeared in places where you might not expect a poet to venture: the Journal of the American Medical Association, Military Experience and the Arts, and The Perch (Yale Program for Recovery and Mental Health) – all signs of a peripatetic intelligence uneasy with boundaries.  Educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University, he became a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology.  He now directs the Talented Writers Program at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale.  Of course, these biographical details are easily blown aside to be replaced by the clear-eyed observations and subtle musicality within his “Eclipse” – something I trust will be worth remembering in the end.

 

 

 

Eclipse: What You See When You Look Away

 

 

The rocks along the shoreline

sun themselves like gray crabs.

The thin sheets of ice that held them

down last winter,

that broke when stepped on,

are gone. The waves imitate

the see-saw of breathing.

 

Sometime between one and one thirty,

the sun will deepen into

a knot of wood round and dark

as an oracle. At that moment,

the light we have no color for

will still, and I can almost forget

the faces I wish I could touch again.

 

Down the beach, a small gray moth

of people might gather,

not looking up at what we are told

would be dangerous to see. Another age

might call that holy, something you want

to but can’t see. Something that

cannot be named satisfactorily.

 

Tonight, everyone will tell

how they were witnesses

to something they were turned away from.

Yellow lights dot the hills above

the beach. Inside, people pass plates,

knowing how rare it is to encounter

anything worth remembering.

 

 

                            ––Jack Stewart

 

 

 

 

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/3184-redletter-090222

 

 

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

Poetry Reading Nov. 9 Lee Varon and David Miller

 

Poetry Reading

November 9, 2022
7:00pm
First Church Congregational (Stone Church just outside of Harvard Sq.)
11 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138



Lee Varon is a social worker and writer. She is the co-editor of "Spare Change News Poems: An Anthology by Homeless People and Those Touched by Homelessness." She has written several volumes of poetry, and her most recent book is an illustrated children's book for kids aged 7 - 12, "My Brother is Not a Monster: A Story of Addiction and Recovery."


David P. Miller's second book of poems, "Bend in the Stair," was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. A retired college librarian, David is a member of the New England Poetry Club Board of Directors. He lives in Jamaica Plain with his wife, the visual artist Jane Wiley.

Red Letter Poem #132

 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 #132

 

 

As the sun sets and hills grow dark,
as the birdsong ends and fields fall silent,
as the people laugh and take their rest,
I watch.
My heart hurries
to the twilit gardens of Ukraine.

 

                                                            –– Taras Shevchenko

                                                                        From: “To N. N.”

Vasyl Makhno is a kobzar – the term for a ‘bard’ in Ukrainian.  Since ancient times, a bardic figure is the poetic embodiment of communal character and cultural memory; it’s the sort of voice we rely upon to echo back to us an almost primal understanding written in the marrow of our bones.  For modern American readers, Walt Whitman was that sort of inspirational wellspring from which all poets continue to draw sustenance.  Ukraine, too, had just such a 19^th century national poet, Taras Shevchenko, an artist of enduring power whose writing not only reflects that love of homeland – it’s beauty, its storehouse of remembrance – but embraces his people’s sadness/longing/determination for freedom and justice as their birthright.  Every bard has the responsibility to both refresh the roots of their literature while promoting new and unexpected growth.  Vasyl’s poetry celebrates the tumultuous life in cities (as did Whitman, of course) while still reflecting upon the quiet beauty of the landscape; his voice seems to me both contemporary and timeless. 

 

Many Europeans are drawn to the idea of the grand metropolis that is New York City, and for that reason Vasyl and his family resettled there two decades ago.  But now, at a painful distance, he must watch his country suffer the wanton cruelty of the Russian invasion, doing what he can to maintain solidarity with family and friends.  As Shevchenko railed against the oppression of the Tsar, Vasyl’s recent poems (like that of all Ukrainian poets) document the brutality being experienced while celebrating the inextinguishable spirit of his people.  But today’s Red Letter comes from Paper Bridge (Plamen Press), a book of poems written before the invasion that has just been published in America with English translations by the estimable Olena Jennings.  The poetry explores that instinctual human desire for home; and since the Russian aggression seems designed to obliterate, not only the people of Ukraine, but their very culture and history, I thought it appropriate to share a depiction of what Ukrainians are fighting to preserve.  “You Have It All” is a lyric poem about simple abundance; it sings of the sort of quiet beauty we all tend to take for granted – that is, until it’s suddenly under threat.  The all being unveiled here is so utterly essential to who Ukrainians are – to who we all are – it underscores why men and women are willing to lay down their lives in its defense.  It’s a lesson my own people need to take to heart, especially during these precarious times.

 

Poet, prose writer, essayist, and translator, Vasyl is the author of fifteen collections of verse.

Among his many honors, he is the recipient of Kovaliv Fund Prize; Serbia’s International Povele Morave Prize in Poetry; the BBC Book of the Year Award (in 2015); and the Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize “Encounter.”  I am delighted to share his voice with new readers, and am grateful to be reminded of what I, too, must savor, honor, and defend.

 

 

 

You Have it All

 

 

You have bread to sustain you

And the cloak of the river on your arm

In the wheat field—rye

And in the rye field—wheat

 

And you have some things to go with your bread

The road, the river, the hill, the slope

Light for your footsteps

Wind for your wings

 

And what more do you need?

Everything else will find you

Your cloak will slip from your arms

And the river will pass you by

 

And a stone will be your pillow

And the riverbank, your bed

A comet’s tail

Will be etched upon your brow

 

And so you have wheat with rye

And you have cabbage and peas

No worries, no sorrow

A key, a door, a lock

 

So, who took care of you

And was so generous?

Who pierced the river with the sky

And opened the door for you?

 

 

––Vasyl Makhno

 

 

 

 

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/3168-redletter-071522

 

 

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