FRUIT GUY
—from Rattle #82, Winter 2023
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John Wojtowicz: “I write poetry because I don’t like fishing, but I do like casting a line into the void and throwing most of what I catch back.” (web)
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FRUIT GUY
—from Rattle #82, Winter 2023
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John Wojtowicz: “I write poetry because I don’t like fishing, but I do like casting a line into the void and throwing most of what I catch back.” (web)
ANY KIND OF LIGHT
—from Poets Respond
February 4, 2024
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Beneth Goldschmidt-Sauer: “Scientists think they have discovered why moths and other nocturnal insects are drawn to light; it’s a glitch we’ve introduced into their evolutionary engineering, caused by our pervasive light pollution. Their discovery provides both an indictment of the damage we have done to our planet and also a tidy metaphor for damaging relationships.”
WHY I OPTED FOR THE MORE EXPENSIVE OIL AT JIFFY LUBE
—from Rattle #40, Summer 2013
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Julie Price Pinkerton: “The first half of ‘Why I Opted for the More Expensive Oil at Jiffy Lube’ is verbatim the conversation I had with the guy working there. He went along with the silliness. The darker ending of the poem came later, in part because the fear of losing my parents became almost an obsession. It entered everyday things, like oil changes. Not that long after I wrote this poem, I did lose my dad. The anticipation of certain loss has always haunted me. A few years ago, before my father died, my husband Scott and I noticed that our beloved, fragile eighteen-year-old yellow tabby, Hankie, was having trouble bending down far enough to reach his food and water bowls. We set the bowls up on phonebooks to make it easier for him, but that didn’t seem terribly dignified. Scott began working on a secret project: from a long scrap of wood he crafted an old-fashioned ‘lunch counter’ for Hankie. He painted it white and curved it at the ends like the counters in the old Woolworth’s five-and-dimes. It was grander, by far, than the Yellow Pages. The metal legs made it tall enough for Hankie to eat comfortably and we took delight in watching him walk over to the lunch counter and take his usual spot, just like a regular. It helped us, knowing we were giving him the best old age possible. The poetry I like most is like that homemade lunch counter: original, surprising, and carefully crafted, with the driving force behind it some kind of love. Love of words, love for a parent, maybe love for an elderly cat. Hankie lived to be twenty, by the way, and we still have his lunch counter, though the restaurant is now closed.”
HAYMAKING
Western Lithuania, 1993
—from Rattle #82, Winter 2023
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Rimas Uzgiris: “In the early summer of 1993, three years after Lithuania declared itself independent, thereby starting the disintegration of the USSR, I visited my then-girlfriend’s family in rural Samogitia (Žemaitija). I had never been to that region, had never heard their dialect spoken, had not ever worked on a farm, or even sat and talked with farmers. So it was quite the anthropological event for me, already feeling a bit lost and homesick after nine months in the country from which my parents once fled as refugees. I still remember that visit fondly, and finally, now living in the country again, I figured out a way to write about it. That way of life, the small, technologically simple farmstead, is dying out. So the elegy mixes here with a bit of comedy (directed at the author who felt himself quite out of place).”
THE FUN
—from Rattle #4, Fall 1995
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Ruth Bavetta: “I was a visual artist for years, until I found I also wanted images that could be painted with words. I wanted to use words, as I used images, to help me make sense of my life. Now, I’ve become convinced that neither words nor images will suffice, because there is no sense-making. There is only what is and what has been. It’s enough to know I am human, separate and mortal, and that’s where I find my poems.” (web)
THE RAFT
I approach every poem I write
as if I’m going to save a life.
—Aaron Abeyta
—from Rattle #82, Winter 2023
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Erica Reid: “Poetry and breath are intimately connected. Is it any great exaggeration to imagine a poem as a life raft, one we inflate with everything we have inside us?” (web)
BAGHDAD, MON AMOUR
Translated by Molly Deschenes from Le cimetiere des oiseaux (editions de l’aube, Paris, 2003)
—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
Tribute to Poets Writing Abroad
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Salah al Hamdani has lived as an Iraqi exile in France for nearly thirty years. He left Iraq after a stay in prison, and continues to fight against the henchmen of Saddam Hussein, as well as the Anglo-American occupants. The actor, director, and poet is author of several books, both in Arabic and French.