The Battle of Menotomy

I’m angry.  Let me start with that fact and pull no punches: I’m angry to see how, in an incredibly short amount of time, we’ve allowed certain small segments of American society to rewrite the national narrative in a manner that would shock George Orwell with its brazenness.  And this revision is not intended to deepen our understanding of history, correct falsehoods with new research, or highlight neglected characters in a more inclusive chronicle—all valid and, in fact, necessary endeavors.  No, these narrow constituencies have as their purpose a defense of generations of wealth and privilege; an enshrining of circumscribed beliefs and biases; a bolstering of their already-considerable and deeply-entrenched power.  And they believe they can, with this carefully-orchestrated PR offensive, convince a majority of the electorate to swallow bitter lies and believe them honeyed; to vote against self-interest and call that a badge of freedom; to sink into the comfortable cushions of complacency and allow someone else to drive the bus of national policy.  And we – We the People—must take responsibility for allowing this deceit to be successful.  After all it’s our country—or at least it was.

Teresa Cader’s marvelous new poem stings us with the results of our casual neglect.  Just going out to check the mail, the poem’s protagonist feels compelled to confront one of her own blind spots: the historical marker outside her townhouse, intended to remind passersby of the political paroxysms and bloody battles that needed to be endured on the road to becoming (and, one hopes, remaining) these United States of America.  It’s human nature: how easy it is to take for granted what is present all around us.  “Dogs piss on it”, the poet writes—and I’m suddenly wondering about the mindset at the other end of the leash.  In the background, the crosswalk traffic box squawks: “wait, wait, wait,” a mechanical Cassandra.  I found myself imagining the research this poet undertook to ferret out some of the history upon which this town was built, this place we call home.  A small village, it was christened Menotomy in 1635, and later renamed West Cambridge.  Arlington only assumed its current name In 1867 to honor ‘the heroes buried at Arlington National Cemetery.’  Our town is preparing to celebrate Arlington 250, a project highlighting the vital role we played in the Revolutionary struggle toward independence.  One of the key events of that enterprise is known as the Battle Of Menotomy where militias assembled to attack to British forces retreating from the battles of Concord and Lexington—the first day of our Revolution.  Yet the poet does not shrink from the knowledge that these patriots were themselves flawed individuals, and some households included slaves as an accepted feature of their colonial life.  This does not negate their achievement; it tempers it in reality.  In this time when some want to sanitize history and make it a more palatable fairytale, Teresa’s poem encourages us to use our own intellectual radar to understand what is buried beneath our feet.

Teresa’s fourth book of poetry, AT RISK, won the 2023 Richard Snyder Memorial Award, selected by Mark Doty, and will be published this fall by the Ashland Poetry Press.  This continues a distinguished career which began with the publication of her first collection, Guests, honored by The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and the Norma Farber First Book Award.  Her many honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe.  She’s also spent years inviting younger writers into the literary tradition, teaching programs at MIT, the UMass-Boston MFA Program, the Emerson College Graduate Writing Program and, for a decade, in the low-residency MFA Program at Lesley University.  Recently, as I’ve gone back and forth between reading poems from Teresa’s forthcoming collection and daily headlines in the Boston Globe, I’ve found myself growing angry. . .and afraid. . .and—for reasons that defy explanation—strangely hopeful.  And so I invite you to share this poem, this Letter with friends and neighbors.  Help sound the alarm, further this conversation, so that we each might have a hand in authoring what comes next in the American narrative—for our own sakes, for that of my grandchild and yours, so they’ll come of age inside an enduring democracy.  To forget history is a tragedy—and, of course, as the philosopher Santayana warned: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”   But far worse are those insidious forces that depend on a populace remaining uninformed, disengaged, hopeless, so that others might continue controlling the levers of power.  They well know that, if we are awakened—that capital-W We—and grasp what is truly at stake in this fraught moment, we’ll find a way to continue our fitful march toward that more perfect union.