Tribute to Law Enforcement Poets

Conversations with Amiri Baraka & Rhoda Janzen

Releasing this June, Rattle #37 features a selection of poems by fourteen law enforcement officers. One might not expect any similarity between policing and poetry, but with reams of paperwork, plenty of drama, and a need for attention to fine detail, poets and cops do have much in common. And as retired police officer James Fleming explains in his introduction, “a sparse, carefully-written police report can evoke tears.”

Of course, the Law Enforcement tribute is only part of the issue. Rattle #37’s particularly rich open section features the work of a full 68 poets. And to cap off one of our most diverse issues yet, Alan Fox interviews the controversial political activist and poet Amiri Baraka, and former-Mennonite memoirist and poet Rhoda Janzen.

= audio available

	Law Enforcement Poets
	James Fleming	Cops on the Beat (essay)
	Madeline Artenberg	Guardians of the Good
	Barbara Ann Carle	Shots Fired
	Sarah Cortez	The Secret
	Betty Davis	Fred Astaire and Betty Davis
	James Fleming	Working Homocide
	Jesse S. Fourmy	Duluth
	Hans Jewinski	Blue Funk
	Suzanne Kessler	Mercy
	Dean Olson	Yellow Sailboat
	David S. Pointer	Hooverites and Jarhead MPs
	John J. Powers	Proof of Service
	G. Emil Reutter	Shoulders
	Vance Voyles	After
	William Walsh	The Old Me
	Sarah Cortez	More Cops on the Beat (essay)
	Poetry
	Christeene Alcosiba	What Remains Is Given Up to the Fire
	Amiri Baraka	The Terrorism of Abstraction
	Wendy Barker	Sterenfall
	Joseph Bathanti	Praise the Lord
	Ben Berman	The Underside
	Darla Biel	When My Ex Called in Sick
	Ace Boggess	Property
	Peter Bradley	Deus ex Machina
	Eric Burger	God’s Razors
	Erik Campbell	Great Caesar’s Ghost
	Rohan Chhetri	Not the Exception
	Paul F. Cummins	Elegy
	Weston Cutter	Lungs Like a Distance Swimmer
	Tiffanie Desmangles	In the County for a PR
	Richard Donnelly	It Would Take
	Thomas Dorsett	The Pleasures of Age
	Kathleen Driskell	In a Diner Somewhere in Iowa…
	Patrick Dutcher	People You May Know
	Jaclyn Dwyer	The Fire
	Alejandro Escude	Precis
	Alan Fox	Tofu Fu & Tofu Fu Two
	Fred Fox	The Sea
	Sarah Freligh	Sex Education
	Ed Galing	Cleaning House
	Kristin George Bagdanov	Holding Light
	Jennifer Givhan	An Editor Advised Me to Stop Writing …
	Susan F. Glassmeyer	On Old Congress Road
	John Gosslee	Portrait of an Inner Life
	Margaret Green	Haiku
	Tresha Faye Haefner	Tattoos on Young Women in Spring
	Theodosia Henney	About-to-Rain
	Jackleen Holton	God Knows I Want to Be Good
	Jessica Jacobs	Primer
	Lowell Jaeger	Trash
	Rhoda Janzen	Let’s Say
		The Minnesota Multiphastic Personality …
	Dave Jarecki	The Cosmic Dance
	Edmund Jorgensen	Wouldn’t You Like to Be a Pepper, Too?
	Rose Kelleher	Enlightenment
	Lynne Knight	Almost by Heart
	Eugenia Leigh	Destination: Beautiful
	Lyn Lifshin	Honeysuckle
	Clint Margrave	The Famous Atheist
	Frank Matagrano	Auditing the Heart
	Joan Mazza	Extremes
	Ken Meisel	Woman Releasing a Tongueless Swallow…
	Donald Platt	Caddy
	Christine Poreba	Between Missing and Found
	Kuno Raeber	Nursing & Void
	Josh Rathkamp	Single Father
	Mary Ellen Redmond	The Sister of Icarus
	Jack Ridl	Hardship in a Nice Place
	Richard Robbins	The Tattooed Woman
	Mary Anne Rojas	Hard Work Pays Off
	Sam Sax	Reuptake Inhibitors
	Rebecca Schumejda	How to Classify a Reptile
	Ali Shapiro	Pittsburgh
	Janice D. Soderling	Real Men Don’t Take No Shit from Nobody
	Alan Soldofsky	Recovery at Lake Tahoe
	Rob Stephens	Dammit and the Placenta
	Bruce Taylor	Fast Facts About Famous People
	Craig van Rooyen	Reading Exodus
	Richard Vargas	The Company Provides a Free Lunch…
	David Wagoner	The Plumber’s Nightmare
	Kathleen A. Wakefield	While Taking a Nap …
		Rediscovers the Wheel
		Listens to the Dead
	A.D. Winans	Media Blues
	Scott Withiam	Watching Deer in a Snowstorm…
	Jeff Worley	How to Become a Professional Folk Singer
	A Bit of Color
	Guy Kettelhack	My Problem with Your Hat
		Sunset
	Conversations
	Amiri Baraka
	Rhoda Janzen
	Photography
	Jarrett Blaustein

Tribute to the Sonnet

Conversations with
Alice Fulton & Molly Peacock

Releasing in December, 2009, issue #32 celebrates the “little song,” poetry’s most enduring traditional form. Shakespeare and Petrachan sonnets, a backwards sonnet, free verse sonnets, blank verse sonnets, clean sonnets, dirty sonnets, invented sonnets, sonnets that praise sonnets, sonnets that mock sonnets, a sonnet that uses only one rhyme-word fourteen times…all capped off with a full heoric crown of fifteen sonnets by Patricia Smith. The variations are limitless—there’s nothing more liberating than a little restriction. T. S. Davis introduces the special section with a personal essay on his journey into form.

Also in the issue, Alan Fox interviews Alice Fulton and Molly Peacock. Along with 60 pages of open poetry, we share the 11 winning poems from the 2009 Rattle Poetry Prize, culled from over 6,000 candidates.