“Allen Ginsberg’s Dead” by M.L. LieblerPosted by Rattle
M.L. Liebler
ALLEN GINSBERG’S DEAD
Why, to write down the stuff
and people of everyday,
must poems be dressed in gold,
in old fearful stone? …
I want poems stained
by hands and everydayness.
—Pablo Neruda
M.L. Liebler: “When I’m in the second grade, I start scribbling stuff. It’s—you guys know, being poets and writers—it’s in there; you can’t do anything about it. But I had no idea, and I would get in trouble for it. They would call my grandmother and say, ‘He scribbles, and we don’t know what it is, but he’s scribbling again, so you pay for the book.’ When I got to the fifth grade I was doing this all the time, scribbling on paper and notebooks and so on. I remember having a big English textbook that had a pelican on a post in the ocean, and when I opened that book I noticed that it had things in it that had a lot of white space around them. When I saw that, I thought, ‘That’s kind of what I’m scribbling. What I’m scribbling has a lot of white space around it.’ So at that point, that’s when I was first able to say, ‘Oh, it’s a poem.’” (web)
Anne Rankin: “Although it’s likely Weldon Kees died years before I was born, somehow, he knew me. Or at least, that’s how I felt after reading ‘Small Prayer.’ The way he captured the anguish of languishing in the depths of major depression—and all in six lines—amazes me still. (In truth the poem speaks to any experience that leaves one feeling grievously wounded.) Later I read more of his work (as well as James Reidel’s biography, Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees), and could easily relate to his struggles with one disappointment after another. Nothing would please me more than for others to discover Kees’ work. He’s worth exploring. As for my own work, in general I’m trying to eradicate loneliness—yours, mine, and ours—one poem at a time.”
Al Ortolani: “I write a lot of poems about my dog. Some are mushy if not downright maudlin. Maybe it’s a flaw in my character, one I can attribute to my age. As a kid, I never cared much for Thanksgiving. Except for apple pie, I considered it boring. The holiday means more to me today. I still don’t care much for turkey, and no one has mastered grandmother’s apple pie recipe, but that’s not the point. Is it?”
Patrick Ryan Frank: “I spend a lot of time thinking about the education of emotion. Where do we learn how to feel? Movies, television shows, pop songs, novels and poems. More and more, we act like actors starring in our own life stories.” (web)
James Ragan: “I was born one of 13 children from immigrant Slovak parents with English as a second language. As early as grade school, I was the object of derision and learned early that I could win fights with words rather than fists. Thus, language and poetry by extension became my source of inspiration. I write to break down borders. My sensibility has always been global, to find expression through my poetry, plays, and films to bring individuals and worlds, seemingly apart, closer in understanding. The cafes I write in are my libraries—from Paris to Prague to New York and Los Angeles. I write to live out loud, and through the expansive reach of art, hope to achieve community through a common language.”
“The Scene Is Set” by Rose LennardPosted by Rattle
Image: “Zaubererturm” by Jennifer S. Lange. “The Scene Is Set” was written by Rose Lennard for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “‘The Scene is Set’ is masterfully composed in every way–the flawless rhymes, the fluid cadence, the depth of meaning. Lennard’s descriptions of Jennifer S. Lange’s piece are both visually and acoustically striking: ‘vine-wound, cloud-capped, tall ships marooned.’ The poet references ‘shades of myth,’ a fitting interpretation of ‘Zaubererturm’ and its soft, subtle invocation of fairytale and folklore. There’s an otherwordly quality to the image, interpreted by the poet as a different kind of reality (‘time slows … reflections warp…horizons bend …’). The poem’s ending, and its depiction of a temporal, illusory world, feels like a perfect homage to a gorgeously enigmatic work of art.”
Donald Platt: “I write to shape into some cogent form the random experiences that life has afforded me. The story of passing my written doctoral exams while being handicapped by a weak bladder, only slightly exaggerated for comic effect, has been waiting for reincarnation in a poem for almost three decades. The anecdote of being so tired that I thought I was being questioned about ‘Barthes’ britches’ in my oral exam is, unfortunately, true. But this humorous material needed to discover a serious counterpart to make a true poem. Of course, that ballast was ‘prosopopoeia,’ the universal urge to talk with our dead again and have them reply to us. The turn to my dead brother Michael at the end of the poem came as a genuine surprise, but also—in retrospect—as an inevitability. To be given such an ending is to receive a kind of grace from some source outside the self, perhaps from the dead themselves.”
