Vijaya Sundaram: A Poet who reverberates and celebrates

   

As the publisher for the Ibbetson Street Press, I am glad that we are going to release a book of poetry titled " Reverberations" by former Medford Poet Laureate, and New England Poetry Club advisory board member Vijaya Sundaram. I caught up recently with Sundaram for an interview...

This collection of poetry embraces the senses with food , nature, etc... It is imbued with a sensibility of celebration even in the midst of loss. Explain.

Thank you, Doug. Yes, I cannot help but celebrate life, both the inner life of the imagination and spirit, and the outer life of the senses. Sometimes, I dwell morosely on death, and fondly contemplate Lao Tzu’s concept of Inaction, especially when I see how horribly our world is being treated by rapacious capitalists, climate change denialists, and genocidal maniacs. However, I also know that I cannot live in that mindscape, nor give in to despair – and that’s because my immediate, personal world is beautiful. I love everything – the trees whose green soothes me on jangled days, my dog’s snout, earnest and scientific as she inspects everything, my husband’s voice in the other room when he teaches Indian music, our offspring’s joyful presence in our lives, my own guitar and singing, the silly dog and cat reels online that distract me from human horrors, my students and our interactions when I teach, writing poetry, doing visual art, seeing the comedy in the midst of tragedy, seeing the kindness of friends, neighbors, strangers, the goodness of those who give freely, despite their own lack. Sorry, I’m getting carried away here! In short, yes, I celebrate life, even as I contemplate death.

Your father appears in the book, and he was quite the punster. ( My Dad was too) Do you think his play with words influenced your own work?

My Dad’s punning sensibilities definitely influenced all of us at home. He was always good for a chuckle, silly jokes, belly-heaving laughs. He was able to laugh through decades of pain, and taught us what it means to be fully human and experience moments of happiness in that way.

In my daily life, I pun in response to other punsters; I pun from time to time, but not necessarily for laughs, although there’s the accidental fun-pun. My husband Warren and offspring Sharada also pun. Warren is a brilliant and hilarious punster, himself. We all love punning – I guess a family that puns together stays together! However, I don’t think it influenced my written work, which tends to be more serious, and rarely indulges in puns.

It seems that your poems flow easily between the hard shell of the earth, and their transcendence from it. Explain. 

What a beautiful observation! For me, the membrane between the Seen and the Unseen is thin. I know I sound all mystical and super-Indian when I say it, but it’s always been true for me – I used to “see” things when I was young; the walls between my waking and dreaming worlds were osmotic. I am not an adherent of any particular spiritual belief or practice, except my own, self-generated, secret one. I know that life is an accident, and yet, in this amazing accident, we found consciousness, and developed morality, conscience, a spirit of inquiry. To me, that is the most breathtakingly magical thing, no matter how scientifically it can be explained – and yes, I love science, and prefer it to the mumbo-jumbo of religion, though religion can be compelling in its way for those who need it, and it cannot be slighted or denied.

So, going back to poetry, when I write, that “lift” from the mundane to the sublime writes itself into a poem – sometimes, I consciously try to subvert it, because it always wants to go there, but I end up surrendering to the impulse.

Getting back to food. I love Indian food. Whenever I have it I feel this strange sense of contentment...the curry speaks to me. Some people think food is trivial. Not you evidently! 

Ah, yes! I LOVE food. I think of it often. It’s terrible, because I have to now be careful, pay attention to my health and all that, as I edge slowly towards the abyss (I’m only half-kidding!)

Food is the ultimate comfort; it’s no surprise that some of us gain weight as we get older (I have!) – when the world seems to be going down the wrong tube, at least food is there to comfort and console, despite its dangers. Oh, and Indian food is the best – it wakes you up; it cozies up to your taste buds; it reminds you that life is worth living (even if it’s only for that half-hour or hour when you’re eating). It reminds you that the pleasures of the palate are things to rejoice in, to share. And it definitely gives one that “strange sense of contentment” as you so eloquently put it!

It seems we are so divorced from nature these days, but you seem to be one with it. Does your Hindu background contribute to this? You seem to have a love relationship with flowers, etc. 

Being out among trees, flowers, the woods, a pond – any and all of it has always made me feel as if I’m stepping out of my own narrowly defined self, stepping out of the borders of my body. I’m hopeless about remembering the names of various flowers; I have to look up books or the Internet to remind myself of their names. I do love flowers, but I wish I were a more disciplined gardener! Also, when I walk in the Fells, and trip over root systems on the slopes, I am struck time and again by how all those roots hold the earth together. When I read what Suzanne Simard wrote about trees, or when I read the research done by others about how mycelium works underground, connecting trees to each other, taking nutrients from mother trees to younger ones, I was, and am filled with a kind of holy awe. When I step on roots in the forest, I thank them, and offer thanks to the earth that’s holding them, and being held together by them. Sounds silly, yes? Nevertheless, I whisper my gratitude to them all (when people cannot hear me). I am always reminded that I am part of it. When I was young, I loved looking up at the gold and green of sunlit mango and neem trees around me, and wanting to become them, to become a sun-filled leaf or branch, or the whole tree. I used to read a lot of William Wordsworth, and his poems about nature are a deep part of my poetic DNA. Apart from that, I used to delve deep into Greek and Roman mythology as a pre-teen, and remember being quite struck by the myth of Daphne, who turned into a laurel tree trying to escape Apollo’s clutches. I also loved reading the story of Hyacinthus (another Apollo-struck victim, sort of), and Narcissus – both turning into flowers, the latter into a rather self-obsessed one, haha.

To answer your question, it’s not really a part of my Hindu background, though - or maybe, it’s part of some mystical part of my ancient Hindu background of which I might be unaware. Mostly, it comes from how I feel, and from absorbing poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Christina Rossetti, Rabindranath Tagore, Oscar Wilde, Tennyson, and other writers who influenced me when I was young.

Why should we read your book?

I loved writing it, and love what’s in it, and want to share it with others. No, I don’t think it’s some sort of unseemly pride, or anything like that – just the need to share what I have seen, or been, or felt. Poets did that for me, and still do that for me. We need to emit what light we have, and absorb more poetry, more beauty, more love, more of the good parts of ourselves out in the world.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Seaweed

When everything's been said.

And yet, I haven't said it all.

Should I speak?

And why?

What need is there?

Surely it is silence I crave.

All this noise, a railing

Against encroaching night,

Drives a stake into my eyes.

Eyes closed at night,

I wonder and wonder.

Lines from Prez's "Lady Be Good" solo

Run around like rats in a maze

Within my forlorn cranium,

Where tangled thoughts,

And sudden sorrows

Float like detached balloons.

Recycled lines from songs

Pound against my dovetail joints,

So that the sutures threaten

To come undone.

If I speak, it is to reveal

And yet, I wish to stay secret –

A decorator crab, seen and unseen,

Covering its shell with seaweed and seaglass,

Hiding within its little garden,

Hoping not to be noticed,

And yet, decorating away.

The pull and push

The yearning and repulsion

The silence and the speech,

Keep me tied to this post.

Untie me, let me go free,

And when I let go,

I shall walk on the waves,

Then sink below, and I shall

Bury me in sand under the sea

So I will hear the heaving of the waves

The endless sigh, its rise and fall,

And the comings and goings

Of silent, secret creatures,

And be glad of the company.

There, the music will filter

Through my ears, and escape,

Like strands of seaweed,

Floating under a full moon

With shimmering algae.

Red Letter Poem #280

  

 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 #280

 

 

 

 

 Wise to the Sybil

 

 
Wise to the Sybil and my Nana

who at 90 wept God has forgotten me,

I don’t care to live forever.

That really sounds like hell.



But today, maybe. Gilded maples,

Blue sky, zephyrs teasing hair

on bare arms, the warbler’s sweet sweet

spiraling through a fall meadow––



if time stops, let it stop now.

I’d ask everyone I love to join me

at the event horizon, my old dog too,

snoozing and drooling beside



a water bowl––did you know the dogs

of war were real, trained by Saxons

to gut men in a shield wall? And I almost

wrote, “Blue sky, trees a living fire,”



but what a pestilential image now.

I try to banish war from my day,

but like a spaniel nosing the pillow

about to jump in bed with you––



the Sunday paper full of children who

won’t fuss another hour, their seasons

dust, skies a terror, wells a target––

it’s ready to be comfortable as hell.

 

 

                          ––Joyce Peseroff

                                   

 

 

“The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god.” So writes Heraclitus in 500 BCE. And what started out as a single prophetess––the Oracle at Delphi––grows to at least ten by the dawn of the Common Era, scattered throughout Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor. Today’s poem, from the estimable Joyce Peseroff, poses the most challenging sorts of questions and seems to call out for divine intervention. Can life remain worthwhile once you’ve witnessed the abundance of suffering (both personal and societal) that seems ever-present? In many faith traditions––and at the core of humanist belief––life is the ultimate good. As a boy, I remember the quiet joy in my own grandmother’s voice at family gatherings when she’d say, raising a glass: l’chaim, to life. But if life’s vitality is paramount, then suffering becomes a kind of evil, a repudiation of what we value. Can a mind accept the presence of both and still savor the day, affirm purpose? The poet is seeing her grandmother slowly wasting away––like the Cumaean Sybil whose wish for eternal life brought ultimate regret, her body deteriorating until nothing but a voice remained. When existence persists beyond any remnant of delight––is life still too precious to surrender? The very notion of “hell” worms its way into the conversation, highlighting what’s at stake. And could there be a more hellish and heart-wrenching sentiment than the one Joyce’s grandmother utters: “God has forgotten me.”



So today’s poem appears to turn away from any wish for eternal life. . .yet it equivocates: this particular sun-blessed autumn day might provide the counterargument. “Gilded maples,/ Blue sky, zephyrs teasing hair/ on bare arms, the warbler’s sweet sweet/ spiraling through a fall meadow––// if time stops, let it stop now.” Perhaps such simple peace is fulfillment, a kind of paradise––momentary and yet somehow enduring. Might this provide a fitting point of departure from what older poets termed this vail of tears? Still, that final closing of the eyes would mean that all of her life––every face, every memory––would be carried into that “event horizon” with her. So how is she––and we––to feel about all this? But then Joyce shifts gears, seems to break the fourth wall, acknowledging the presence of her readers as she wrestles with this unfolding poem. “And I almost/ wrote, ‘Blue sky, trees a living fire,’/ but what a pestilential image now.” Even her profound joy is interrupted by thoughts of climate degradation, natural and manmade disasters, headlines reminding her of “of children who/ won’t fuss another hour, their seasons/ dust, skies a terror…”. The poet’s little detour-exegesis about ‘the dogs of war’ feels like a demonstration of the mind’s turmoil as she grapples with these concerns, trying to discover the path forward. Perhaps heaven and hell both lie at the tip of her pen.



Joyce is a poet, essayist, and educator; her sixth collection, Petition, was designated a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Book Award. She was the editor of Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake; The Ploughshares Poetry Reader; and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon––working to illuminate the poets and literary traditions she sees as most vital. For that same reason, she directed and taught in UMass Boston’s MFA Program, and currently writes a poetry column for Arrowsmith Press. I consider her voice a vital element in the Red Letter community, and so I happily contend with the emotional crosscurrents enlivening her poems. And now I’m thinking: why not add Nana to that Sibylline sisterhood (Joyce’s grandmother, or mine, or yours, for that matter), because where else do we turn when needing sage advice, a dire warning, or the balm of a knowing smile? Should we not focus our deepest attention––and our inky skills––on those unexpectedly satisfying moments when life shines most brilliantly? Perhaps that’s all we ever have. If, perhaps, another such moment is given to us. . .and yet another. . .raise your glass, your pen in salute: l’chaim!

 

 

 

 

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

 

All Red Letter installments and videos will be archived at:

https://stevenratiner.com/category/red-letters/

Review of HEADLESS IN HANCOCK 1882 By Sebastian Lockwood

 Review of HEADLESS IN HANCOCK 1882

By Sebastian Lockwood

LUX Press 2025 395 pages

Review by Tom Miller

Sebastian Lockwood is a story teller and a good one. He makes use of his skills in his most recent publication Headless In Hancock 1882 which he sets in the Hancock Inn and Fox Tavern, an establishment that has actually been in existence since 1789, and in the surrounding Mondack region. Lockwood is unabashedly in love with the area which he pays homage to in the book. In the introduction he declares the work to be “historical fiction” which indeed it is, allowing him the freedom to tell a good story without letting mere facts get in the way. Having said that, one needs to understand that Lockwood went to great lengths to “get it right” in the sense of the political and social sensibilities of a small town in New Hampshire in 1882. After all the Civil War is just seventeen years in the past and many of the societal opinions regarding slavery and abolition still circulate. The radical Puritans still rule south of the Merrimack River. Electricity has not quite brought the onslaught of modernism to the area. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is in effect. Boston and New York are intriguing but frightening places. Railroads are sort of the thing...elsewhere.

While the book follows several main characters throughout, each chapter brings a new set of visitors to stay at the Inn. Each new visitor is unique and we find literary folks, cads, hunters, intellectuals, in other words a variety of interesting people. Lockwood is playful in introducing these characters. Washington Irving shows up as Benjamin Arbor, writer, who adds some gory details to the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hallow, hence the tie into the title of this book. Emerson is there as Waldo, an aged fellow whose caretaker is Aunt Moody. In real life Mary Moody Emerson, Ralph’s aunt who predeceased him by some twenty five years was a great influence on his thinking. Fly Rod Cornelia Crosby, the first registered guide in Maine appears. James Freeman Clark interested in freedom and equality in real life was a minister and a editor for several literary magazines. Clerk Maxwell, an inventor, in real life was a renowned expert on electricity and magnetism. Eddie Gibbons, a writer, could be today’s Scottish poet of the same name. Roger McGuinn, something of a recluse living on the mountain, is perhaps named for the fellow who founded the current music group The Byrds and composed “The 1882 Survivalist” in their Folk Den collection. There are others if you care to delve into historical fact.

Lockwood also introduces in detail a special libation and a unique meal in each chapter. The instructions for each drink are included in the narrative and the menus for the meals are in an addendum. Quite the epicurean Mr Lockwood is.

The main characters in the book are quite likable, a little mercurial perhaps but very real and had me cheering for them as they dealt with the adversities, none of which were outlandishly disastrous. Their stories evolve in each chapter and are the threads around which the other stories are wound. Skillfully so.

All in all this is a charming, nostalgic, and pleasant read evidencing the author’s enchantment with the town, the area and the time. Well done.

Ibbetson Street 57 Pushcart Nominees 2025

 

The Pushcart Prize is an American literary award that honors the best poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction published in small presses and literary magazines each year. Editors of these publications can nominate up to six works they have published during the year, and a panel of editors and past winners selects the final winners to be featured in the annual anthology. Being nominated is considered an honor in itself, as it recognizes work singled out from thousands of submissions

Full Pushcart Prize list for Ibbetson Street magazine:

Charles Coe The Arrangement

Ruth Hoberman Oh! Obituary

Karen Klein. HENENI

Lee Varon DEAR POETRY, DEAR CRUMBLING HEART

Ted Kooser If you take time

Wendy Drexler Whether A Forest is like quicksand, and if you are lost in it...

Red Letter Poem #279

 

 

Red Letter Poem #279

 

 

 

 

 Transmigration

 

 

Bach Cello Suite #1 in G Major: Prelude /

performed by Yo-Yo Ma

 

 

A cello is a tree singing.

Take his bow—drawn across

the crescent of hollow spruce

filament touching filament.

 

As I listen my body a tree’s body

vibrating and the wind’s hands

and the spruce shivers.

 

In the forest he caresses his cello.

 

Trill of a minor key under G major.

Sound under silence

and I understand—I think

 

how Pythagoras understood

the inaudible music of perpetual spheres

planets chanting. And you,

 

Red-winged Blackbird—

flame bursting from ebony wings

waiting atop the cattail—

sing your river of syllables.

 

 

                           ––Anastasia Vassos

                                   

 

 

Synchronicity.  The term was introduced by Carl Jung––the Swiss psychiatrist, prolific author, and founder of the school of analytical psychology.  Referring to “meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect,” Jung’s “togetherness principle” was part of his larger cosmological vision, borrowing heavily from Chinese Taoist philosophy.  Of course, you can argue that our meaning-making minds are always furiously at work, trying to impose order on this chaotic existence––that perhaps it’s only human consciousness that turns chance into revelation.  But this morning, I’m thinking about interconnectedness and gratitude––here in our time of thanksgiving––and have a perfect poem, not to answer the question, but to help intensify that wondering.  Anastasia Vassos has appeared once before in these electronic pages; but a few months ago, and thinking ahead to that familial red-letter day on the calendar, I decided to schedule her poem “Transmigration” to mark the holiday.  To be honest, I’d completely forgotten about her epigraph at the start, saluting Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of the first of Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello––even when, last Friday, I attended the cellist’s return to Symphony Hall in Boston, playing all six Suites––a three-hour performance without intermission!  It was an astonishing, challenging experience, not least because the celebrated musician was offering the Bach as part of a program he entitled We the People: Celebrating Our Shared Humanity, which he’s been performing all around the world.  “In this time of turmoil and divisiveness,” Yo-Yo Ma wrote in the program, he was challenging us to think deeply about how our lives might be more intertwined than we know––and how music and art create those “communal spaces where we all feel safe and welcome.”  And this morning I learned that Anastasia was in the audience as well.   

 

Right from her poem’s opening line––“A cello is a tree singing.”–– we are being invited into Anastasia’s communal space where she is allowing herself to feel truly at-home on this blue-green sphere hurtling through darkness.  “As I listen my body a tree’s body/ vibrating and the wind’s hands/ and the spruce shivers.”––intentionally omitting some of the punctuation that might separate subjects and objects, our minds from (what another poet once called) “the music of what happens.”  Perhaps that is one of the main purposes of art: to allow us to stop (for a few moments) being contained within these mortal bodies, this circumscribed consciousness, and to experience something unimagined–– that “Sound under silence.”  It seems that Bach grasped what Pythagoras and the red-winged blackbird also understood: that design (intentional or accidental) is woven through all we know, but that (and here’s that Taoist patriarch Lao Tzu chiming into the conversation) we must find some more intuitive way to apprehend what is everywhere present.  “The tao that can be told,” begins the Tao Te Ching, “is not the eternal Tao/ The name that can be named/ is not the eternal Name.”  So how are we to respond?  Balance precariously atop the quivering cattail of our days, and sing our river of syllables as artfully and clearly as we can.

 

Anastasia Vassos is the author of two collections: Nostos (from Kelsay Books), and Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate Press).  Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets.  A speaker of three languages, Anastasia writes compellingly about the Greek-American diaspora, and how poetry is a vehicle for deepening understanding––within our lives and without.  It’s clear that her psychic antennae are always up and scanning the airwaves for whatever vibration feels most compelling.  And that, I’ve come to realize, is what I, too, am most thankful for: the possibility of deep awakening, always close at hand and, of course, those much-loved beings with whom I can share the experience.  Forgive me, but now my mind can’t help but angle off in a tangent.  In the last month or two, we have lost a number of fine poets––including, just this past weekend, the unimaginably buoyant spirit that was Charles Coe, with whom I served on the board of the venerable New England Poetry Club.  Somehow Anastasia’s fine poem has allowed me to feel such deep gratitude for all we are fortunate enough to know in our lives––and to sense the magnitude of the loss when we must let go.  Unless there is no loss but simply transmigration into something else.  What would it feel like, I wonder, to entertain that possibility for, say, the duration of a walk in the woods, the song of a blackbird, the arpeggiated chords of Bach’s masterpiece––or, Dear Reader, for the time it takes to peruse a letter from a distant friend?

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

All Red Letter installments and videos will be archived at:

https://stevenratiner.com/category/red-letters/