MARK
—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
__________
Katherine Lo: “This poem came out of a conversation with a friend about the coping mechanisms we all have and how they help us move forward, even with some damage.”
![Rattle Logo](https://www.rattle.com/images/footR5.png)
MARK
—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
__________
Katherine Lo: “This poem came out of a conversation with a friend about the coping mechanisms we all have and how they help us move forward, even with some damage.”
THIS AGAIN
—from Poets Respond
November 5, 2023
__________
Bob Hicok: “Don’t know what to say about this, other than what the poem does.”
ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, AND FIREARMS
Haibun
—from Rattle #47, Spring 2015
Tribute to Japanese Forms
__________
Marsh Muirhead: “Haiku and haibun are a great place to store and flex the notions and images that come to us all the time and everywhere. They are sometimes starts to longer pieces, or as finished writing they serve as a kind of journaling, whether as fact or fiction, about our own lives or others we imagine.”
DIET COKE
Prompt: “This poem was written in an Ellen Bass workshop. Bass asked us to write poems with ‘thingitude’ or poems that use and celebrate the observation of the real. We looked at Thomas Lux’s poetry, with a focus on his poem ‘Refrigerator, 1957’. Bass asked us to pay close attention to the sounds, humor, and asides in Lux’s poem and, afterwards, to try to incorporate some of that vibrancy into our own work.”
—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
Tribute to Prompt Poems
__________
Lexi Pelle: “Years ago I read The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. In it she says, ‘Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box.’ Prompt poems give me that box. Like poets who use form to aid their ideas, I sometimes need a good prompt to get me writing.” (web)
SALT
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
__________
M: “I was widowed at a very young age. My therapist suggested I attend a grief support group to share with others in similar circumstances. When I walked into the room, I was struck by the realization that everyone was at least 25 years older. And while we shared grief in common, the concerns of these older widows were very different from mine. On many levels, we just couldn’t connect. I also read stories online of other young widows who experienced similar feelings of alienation in grief support groups filled with older women. I wanted to write about this disparity, but didn’t know how to approach it. Then about a year ago, I attended a reading by Lucille Clifton. She told an unrelated story about driving through a forest with a friend, and their joy upon catching a glimpse of a rare albino deer. The more I thought about that misfit deer, the more I realized Ms. Clifton had unknowingly offered me a perfect metaphor for my experience. I became the albino deer, and I hope that my poem will speak to other young widows who find themselves lost among the elders of the herd.”
PORTRAIT OF THE FATHER AS AN ALCOHOLIC
—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
__________
Karan Kapoor: “This poem is the faux title-poem of the collection I’ve been working on for three years: Portrait of an Alcoholic as a Father. Writing about a troubled external subject is as much an excavation of their deepest flaws as it is a revelation of the writer’s biases. Leonard Cohen, at whose altar I worship, says ‘poetry is merely the evidence of life.’ I think this means that not only is a poem rooted in real life, but that much of real life is understood through a poem.” (web)
NYCTOPHOBIA
—The fear of night or darkness.
—from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
__________
Patrick Ryan Frank: “In my work, I’m interested in issues of control: how people master their fears, or else are mastered by them; how a poem’s movement can push against its structure; how meaning can determine shape. Essentially, life is composed of conflict and tension, and poetry is the art of struggling beautifully.” (web)