Rattle is a publication of the Rattle Foundation, an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the practice of poetry, and is not affiliated with any other organization.
Ivy Hoffman: “I don’t think there is one answer to why I like to write poetry. In the beginning, I would read poetry to my family and I would wish it was my own. Then, it became a sort of therapy for me. Sometimes I wrote because something was frustrating me and I just needed to work through it. I still find that I discover something new about myself with everything I write, which is the coolest thing, but at this point, I also feel like I am writing simply because it has become such a part of me. It’s just like breathing—if you hold your breath for long enough, eventually your body will kick in and start to breathe again. I feel that if I tried to stop writing, after a few days my fingertips would find a keyboard again and before I knew it I would be writing. If you asked me why I love my parents, or my sister, or my cat, I could give you a bunch of things that I love about them, but at the end of the day, those are just traits. I love them because I love them. The same thing goes for poetry. I love it because, well, I do.”
Tishani Doshi (from the conversation in this issue): “There’s something marvelous about the conciseness and smallness of poems. I love that they are small and yet very big, and that you can spend time with one poem and it can expand so much in you. There’s something about the distillation of the form that is allowed to say things in a way that we can’t do with other arts. There’s something mysterious about it. Nobody is able to define exactly what a poem is; nobody’s able to say what makes a poem good or not—these are still questions that are out for debate, and, in a way, I think they’re meaningless. If a poem touches you or moves you, it has the possibility of transformation, and I’m really interested in that. Of course, novels can do that, and dance is capable of those transformative moments, but a poem for me also reaches back to a tradition of orality, the spoken word, of putting something into existence just by speaking it, by naming it. There’s something ancient in that. There’s something powerful about incantation. I’m less interested in breaking down a poem than in the sense of a poem just washing over you and changing you somehow.” (web)
Ed Orr: “In my own mind, I would be invisible to myself—to say nothing of others—if I didn’t write. Thoughts come, connect, and I must record, with conscience, or suffer.”
Ankur: “As an Indian who was also born and raised in India, the sights, sounds, smells, and words of India shape me: I write in English, but it is the English that India has adopted as her own and shaped as her own. Not merely different vocabulary or syntax, but different images etched onto one’s mind. Trees bearing the last mangoes under heavy monsoon rain: that is what the word ‘rain’ evokes in me and lives in my poetry, very different from the drippy, drab, cold autumn rain that I feel here in Norway.”
Glenn W. Cooper: “I live and write in Tamworth, Australia. I like rainy weather and junk food. When I’m not writing, I can be found worshipping at the altar of Bob Dylan. Ideally, I would like a life that didn’t require my presence.”
Ben Wenzl: “Originally, I planned on going to school to major in piano performance. I very quickly realized that I didn’t have the makings of a concert pianist. I turned to writing and found that performing my own writing, my own truth, gave me a bigger rush than any good recital ever did. Music will always be my biggest influence, though. I am a true lover of sounds (both on and off the page), so I always try to infuse some musicality into whatever I’m writing. I don’t want all those years of lessons to be for nothing.” (web)
Sean Wang: “In Singapore, we are infamous for our rigorous national exams, born out of a strict Asian culture that places an emphasis on academic excellence. One of our key exams is the PSLE, taken by students at 12 years old and holds the power to determine, in essence, the course of their lives. Reading about the recent outcry regarding the difficulty of such exams in the time of a pandemic, it made me reflect on my own personal experience. For me, these exams were the first time I realised that I was in many ways, average and unexceptional. I think coming to terms with my inadequacy was one of the first steps I took towards adulthood, and a struggle I continue with today.”
Emma Hoff: “When people read poetry, and literature in general, they finish, and they say, ‘I wish that was real.’ But in the period of time they read the text, everything in it is real, in a way. I like to write poetry because I like to make unbelievable things real.”
Iheoma Uzomba: “I am a Nigerian. I share lineages from the south and southeastern regions of my country. Writing, to me, is lifestyle. I feel so because writing is not restricted to just a sphere of life: it cuts across anything and everything. It is like telling you, the writer, ‘You are God right now, yes, create this piece and then breathe life into it.’ I find interesting the themes of psychological imbalance, precedence, sexuality, dilemma, and disillusionment.” (web)
Gil Arzola: “The Death of a Migrant Worker is a gift and monument of words to my parents. It is a way of saying ‘these people passed through this way’ and here’s what they did.”
In just one highlight from Rattlecast #37, Charles Harper Webb reads and discusses his most-requested poem (on request), “Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72.”
Rattle is a publication of the Rattle Foundation, an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the practice of poetry, and is not affiliated with any other organization. 
