LATE FRAGMENT
—from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
__________
Glenn McKee: “I suffer from a 60-year-old habit of tearing poetry off my life. Not many pages of my life remain, and those that do hang on like surgical tape plastered on a hairy body. Nevertheless, I intend to write myself out of life.”
WHY INSTEAD OF BEGGING MY MOM FOR EXTRA ALLOWANCE MONEY SO I COULD BUY A RECORD ALBUM I SHOULD HAVE DECLARED VENDETTA ON THE ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA
—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023
__________
Matt Mason: “My favorite poem is one that, at first, makes me wonder if it’s a poem. I love a poem written because that’s what the poet wanted to write and they didn’t worry if it fit the mold or definition or what they were lectured a poem is supposed to be. Not that we shouldn’t study the traditions and forms and histories, but poems like that shine for me: they have surprise, coming in disguises instead of the formal suit or gown we all thought they were supposed to wear back when they were set in front of us in high school. These are the poems that, had they been set in front of me in high school, would have gotten me on fire for poetry years earlier.” (web)
HERE WE WERE HAPPY
—from Poets Respond
August 13, 2023
__________
Rebecca Starks: “It is hard to write about the fires in Maui as they are happening and in the face of the terrible loss of life. I took refuge in W.S. Merwin’s palm garden on Maui. The title echoes the words on the stone marking his and his wife’s ashes.” (web)
THE OLD GREEN RECLINER
—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
__________
Why do you like to write poetry?
Lily Karpman: “I am not a person who verbally expresses their feelings a lot but through poetry I can express exactly how I feel. It is much easier to give the pure feeling through poetry instead of verbally because poetry can be anything. Graceful or sharp, sweet or bitter, the words of every line in every stanza can perfectly express a feeling. So that is why I like writing poetry: it helps me express a feeling at its purest form.”
OFFSET
objkt.com | text/plain
Typed.art is a platform on the Tezos blockchain. It allows any keystroke, including universal alt keystrokes and symbols, to be stored on-chain as compositions of text, as opposed to imagery. This has created an unusual opportunity for text-based art. In the example of OFFSET, a grid of “blocks” represents letters and spaces, creating both a minimalist artwork, created entirely with keystrokes, and hiding within it the frame of a private poem. The poem itself is hidden—the words are represented by the larger of two sets of blocks.
Full Text:
Our love
is like a
wave
unleashed
surrender
to it
let
yourself
be
offset.
—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023
Tribute to NFT Poets
__________
Justin Tagg (Devoid): “Literary NFTs have a promise that’s not yet entirely fulfilled—that of storing original text on the blockchain itself (as opposed to being stored only as imagery), rendering it framable, tradable, and composable—with NFTs that are coded to communicate with other NFTs. Whilst NFTs have already ensured that poetry can be framed and traded as provably original works of art, it’s the ability to store text on-chain that will reframe the concept of ‘page’ in ways not seen in our lifetime. There are many examples of on-chain text, but it’s still in the minority—whereas I expect it will become the gold standard in the future. For now, the opportunity with NFTs to render a piece of poetry as provably original or of a limited edition has meant I’m able to sell individual pieces of poetry without the need for a publisher. If somebody enjoys my words, they can add my microfiction or poetry to their collection in the same way they might do with visual work. Most of my poetry has been explored through the Tezos blockchain, which is an inexpensive but robust network to publish NFTs. In addition, by allowing visual and literary work to be distributed on the same ‘rails’—as opposed to using independent media-specific distribution models—we’ve also seen a flourish of collaborations between ‘pictures’ and ‘words’ that have revealed a fertile space between the two forms that is blurring the lines between them.” (web)
TATTOO
—from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
__________
Todd Davis: “I loved poetry growing up. My dad would read Keats and Wordsworth and Frost to us at the dinner table. But I didn’t think I could write it until I read Maxine Kumin’s ‘The Excrement Poem.’ As the son of a veterinarian, I wasn’t exactly sure what poems were made of, what was acceptable to write about and what wasn’t. Kumin showed me that all my years of cleaning shit from kennel floors was worth something, that poems are part of the body and the body doesn’t know the difference between the sacred and the profane.”
THE ISSUE OF RATTLE
—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023
__________
Matt Mason: “My favorite poem is one that, at first, makes me wonder if it’s a poem. I love a poem written because that’s what the poet wanted to write and they didn’t worry if it fit the mold or definition or what they were lectured a poem is supposed to be. Not that we shouldn’t study the traditions and forms and histories, but poems like that shine for me: they have surprise, coming in disguises instead of the formal suit or gown we all thought they were supposed to wear back when they were set in front of us in high school. These are the poems that, had they been set in front of me in high school, would have gotten me on fire for poetry years earlier.” (web)