September 4, 2011
DEFIANTLY
—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010
__________
John L. Stanizzi: “I defiantly owe this poem to the spell checker and to my high school students.” (website)

DEFIANTLY
—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010
__________
John L. Stanizzi: “I defiantly owe this poem to the spell checker and to my high school students.” (website)
Releasing in December, 2010, Rattle #34 turns its attention to another intimate vocation, spotlighting the poetry of 26 mental health professionals. These psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, and case-workers dive inside the mind daily and come home soggy with the muck of dreams. Many of them write about their careers, but the scope is broad, and all of their poems are informed by years of training and unique insights on the human soul. The section is highlighted throughout by the stunning abstract portraiture of art therapist Mia Barkan Clarke. As psychoanalyst Forrest Hamer writes, “so much depends on what’s under.”
Yet the Tribute is only part of the issue. Rattle #34’s open section features the work of 50 poets, plus the 11 winners of the 2010 Rattle Poetry Prize. Also, Alan Fox interviews former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and Pablo Neruda translator William O’Daly.
As much as we loved providing an audio CD for issue #27’s Tribute to Slam, we didn’t want page poets to be left out. The tradition of public readings is central to contemporary poetry, whose medium, we’ve always felt, isn’t the page, but rather the breath itself. Here is an opportunity to listen to poems as the authors intended them to sound, in their own voice.
Any poems that have appeared in Rattle are eligible, and this archive will be updated regularly. If you are a poet who we’ve published, and would like to be included, email us to ask how. We also plan on adding audio clips from recent and upcoming interviews—keep an eye on this page for updates.