I’ve always enjoyed the poetry magazine Rattle for its modernity and humor, its willingness to mix the political, the sublime, and the silly. Each issue, in addition to a selection of poems, reviews, and interviews, contains a special tribute section, and this issue’s theme is The Greatest Generation. I loved the plainspoken-ness, the bald, unbeautified statements made in the poems of these elder writers, who maybe don’t have it all figured out, as Nan Sherman in “Don’t Ask Me Any Questions”:
I’ve always enjoyed the poetry magazine Rattle for its modernity and humor, its willingness to mix the political, the sublime, and the silly. Each issue, in addition to a selection of poems, reviews, and interviews, contains a special tribute section, and this issue’s theme is The Greatest Generation. I loved the plainspoken-ness, the bald, unbeautified statements made in the poems of these elder writers, who maybe don’t have it all figured out, as Nan Sherman in “Don’t Ask Me Any Questions”: “Where is the wisdom / that arrives with age? / Another fairytale for the young”; or who maybe do, like Fred Fox in “Hosanna to Life”: “For years my ego fooled me. / I carried the world on my shoulders. / I now realize how inane that was / Living within a self-imposed island.” Peggy Aylsworth’s “Beyond the Headlines” is an acknowledgement of the pain and ugliness inherent in life, and for which there is often little relief. The poem culminates in a wonderful moment: “In the midst of stings & consolations, / I sing through the window at the dried-out meadow, / stirred by the sudden silver of unpredicted rain.” There are two “conversations” (interviews) here, with Jane Hirshfield and with Jack Kornfield, Zen-trained poets who are introspective and have much to share of other poets, not just themselves. And because I am prone to the occasional wondering about the whole point of art anyway, and daresay others might be too, I can’t help but wrap up with a great answer by Hirshfield: “Art’s example reminds us that it is possible to develop an awakened and courageous and indecorous soul, in the face of a world that mostly asks us to be obedient sheep.”
[www.RATTLE.com]
