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 #250
Valentine to Jimmy Piersall
Even if you hadn’t cracked a hundred homers
and rounded the bases backwards,
even if your mitt couldn’t reach
from the starstruck green of center field
straight up to Mars
to snatch fly balls from the sky,
I would have loved you.
Because you feared no one. Because
when your chest pushed up against an umpire’s
words did not fumble in your mouth
but hurled like a stream of tobacco spit.
I was small, had yet to find my voice.
––Susan Eisenberg
There is a reason we create grand statuary––and place them high on pedestals, above the ground we mortals walk upon. We elevate these expressions of the extraordinary so everyone will have to lift their eyes to see them, their glorious heads haloed by sun and sky. These days, true heroes (and, to be clear I’m referring to towering figures of any gender; the term heroines has come to have a diminished stature of late) are an increasingly rare commodity. In this encompassing media landscape, it seems we quickly begin uncovering their flaws and failings even while the marble or bronze is being unveiled. Some even suggest that people first exalt their heroes so that, subsequently, they can have the pleasure of tearing them down. But the societal need to discover and spotlight our champions––those who are born with extraordinary gifts, or work diligently to perfect their skills, or stand with an unswerving commitment to some enduring principle: this is quite an interesting thing to consider and is brought to mind by Susan Eisenberg’s delightful new poem.
In our cultural climate, sports figures are often accorded the hero’s laurels; but Susan is recalling a simpler time (before mind-boggling half-billion-dollar contracts, and ESPN fanfare.) She’s celebrating the great Jimmy Piersall who signed his first baseball contract with the Boston Red Sox at age eighteen and, in 1950, was one of the youngest players to ever play the game. (I should add that Susan, a Cleveland girl, first saw him play during his time with the Indians.) Piersall became an All-Star center fielder but excelled at the plate as well (he still holds the Sox record for garnering 6 hits in a single nine-inning game.) Yet his behavior often extended beyond the capricious, becoming erratic and sometimes violent. He would get involved in brawls, on and off the field, which led several times to minor league demotions. Still, his career spanned 17 years, playing for five teams. But one of his most lasting impacts came with the publication of his memoir Fear Strikes Out; in it, he revealed that he suffered from bipolar disorder and had experienced a mental breakdown––but determinedly fought his way back to health and the sport he loved. This was at a time when sports figures kept such ‘dark’ secrets hidden from the public, but Piersall’s honesty helped so many suffering their own double lives.
Susan, you may know, is a poet and retired electrician; she’s the author of five poetry collections, most recently, Stanley’s Girl (Cornell)––as well as the nonfiction (and New York Times Notable) book, We’ll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction. When I first came across her poetry, I was impressed how her verse often celebrated the blue-collar working experience in a country not always appreciative of its labors. But now Susan is also a visual artist, oral historian, and a Resident Scholar at Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center––which, to my mind, begins to flirt with hero-status. Her poem today touches on Piersall’s gleeful on-field antics. Not surprisingly, this felt thrilling to a young girl who might not feel so free to express what was curtained off inside the mind. “Because you feared no one. Because/ when your chest pushed up against an umpire’s/ words did not fumble in your mouth...”. The possibility that authority might be defied and unbridled individuality expressed––this was, perhaps, the first liberating poem seeded in Susan’s consciousness. And its relevance today is underscored by the news story just unfolding from a current Red Sox outfielder, Jarren Duran. He revealed in a new documentary that he was almost broken by his sense of failure and, in 2022, attempted suicide. We are overjoyed that he was unsuccessful––not only because he has since become a marvelous player (voted MVP of the 2024 MLB All-Star game), but because the emotional courage he is displaying today will likely save other lives.
All this makes me think of the friends of mine suffering devastating illness, or acting as caretakers for spouses struggling with debilitating conditions. It brings to mind all the artists I know who persist in producing new instances of beauty and delight, even when the world seems determined to ignore them. And still others, determined to stand up for our democratic republic when dark forces are attempting to shatter its ideals. Heroics, Susan reminds us, come in many unexpected forms, and have an effect on people which no one could have anticipated. ‘Finding our voice.’ These, here, are my modest statues built of ink and breath. Am I wrong to think that––right now, dear readers––your minds are serving as their pedestals?
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 BlueSky
@stevenratiner.bsky.social
and on Twitter
@StevenRatiner
And coming soon:
a new website to house all the Red Letter archives at StevenRatiner.com
