Barbara Hamby: “I started writing odes about 25 years ago and have fallen in love with the form if you can call it that. The ode has been defined as a poem of praise, but I’ve found it to be much more complex. The praise is a starting point for a poet, a way to grapple with all the big questions we face as human beings—who am I? Why am here? Life is short, so what do I do with it? Keats used his nightingale to address these mysteries. Walt Whitman used himself. One of my big questions is what does it mean to be a woman and how do I navigate the land mines that women face. ‘Box Ode,’ especially, deals with this.” (web)
“Girl Is Glued to Door” by William RossPosted by Rattle
Image: “Untold Stories” by Judith Fox. “Girl is Glued to Door” was written by William Ross for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
Comment from the artist, Judith Fox: “The poem I selected for the June Ekphrastic Challenge is the well-crafted and insightful ‘Girl is Glued to Door.’ It wasn’t an easy choice, there were numerous beautiful and intelligent entries, but the poem skillfully echoes and expands on the mysteries and tensions in the poster I photographed; in its placement over a shocking red lock and useless door. The poem opens with a simple and engaging observation: ‘There are things I still don’t understand about you’ and continues with thoughtful questions of the subject: ‘Are you Followed? Are you hunted?’ and observations: ‘the cryptic signals you send.’ The powerful final line particularly resonated with me: ‘The voice shouting: Entry is Trespass.'”
The Lover’s Case is a series of four poems exploring symbology in dialogue with the meaningless. The rose has a long history of symbolic meaning that changes based on the context in which it appears. In the absence of any semantic communication, what interpretations can be given?
Sarah Ridgley: “As a generative artist, NFTs are a natural fit for my art. I write programs that use a unique hash to generate an endless number of variations. The hash acts as a sort of digital fingerprint that alters the random values in the program to produce different iterations from the same algorithm. Blockchain technology allows me to create provenance by tying the code and the hash together into a distinct, identifiable work. I think that NFTs are a groundbreaking development for digital art. I love that they allow ownership and provable authenticity, while still letting everyone see and enjoy my work.” (web)
Alison Luterman: “Like so many women of my generation, I’ve wrestled with the contradictions of who I’m supposed to be, and who I am, what I’m supposed to enjoy, and what I actually do like. I think the Barbie movie is arriving in our world at a great time for all of us, men and women, to start looking at these questions in a new, playful way.” (web)
Kakul Gupta: “I like poetry because poems help me declutter the barrage of thoughts that envelop my consciousness through the day. Specifically, haiku, as it pivots on capturing the ephemeral moment of heightened awareness—the ‘aha’ moment as it is called—which is quite challenging as well. But whenever it happens, however rare it might be, it gives me immense pleasure. This is what propels me to write.”
Ed Hack: “I started writing poetry at 16 when the world opened up to me in such a way that a poem seemed the only way to try to make sense of it. I wrote free verse for years, was published here and there, then, three years ago, feeling the need for the discipline of metered language and form, turned to the sonnet, to explore its precisions and passions.”
Grace Cavalieri: “Last night I dreamed I was going into battle wearing a blue terry cloth suit of armor with a bent plastic sword. Maybe this is a depiction of the poet’s life, but I’ll take it. Blue is the color of courage and communication (the spiritual leaders tell us), and as for the sword—well, it wasn’t broken, was it?” (web)