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.”
Garnet Juniper Nelson: “A century after publication, an image of the poem ‘When You Meet a Member of the Ku Klux Klan’ made waves on the internet. It was written by Robert L. Poston, one of the leaders of the Black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association alongside Marcus Garvey, and was originally published in the association’s weekly newspaper. The poem directly advocates for violence against KKK members. I have no qualms with the piece, but it made me curious how a contemporary poem might address issues of liberation involving my own community. So remember, if a man with a suspiciously manicured beard—or anyone else who purports to know it all—asks ‘What is a woman?’ the answer is simple: there are diverse paths to womanhood. I would also note that TERF is itself a contradiction in terms; there is no such thing as uninclusive feminism.” (web)
Alicia Rebecca Myers: “Reading about Trump’s proposed high tariffs made me reflect on the high stakes of this election. It still astounds me that what one person finds beautiful is at the root of another person’s fear.” (web)
