Journal Review: Rattle

Literary Journal Review: Rattle

Rattle seeks to break down the institutional-conventional barriers that tend to keep poetry isolated as an esoteric and elitist pursuit, read only by scholars and those involved in its production. Rattle’s tagline is “the journal for people who love poetry—whether they realize it or not,” and the editors claim to attract readers and contributors across the socioeconomic spectrum, including “the lawyer, the landscaper, the academic and housewife.” In spite of this democratic philosophy, Rattle does not embrace a populist aesthetic, nor does it crowd its pages with sentimental, crass, or amateurish verse. Since it was established in 1993, Rattle’s poems have been featured in Best American Poetry, and although it welcomes new writers as part of its mission to spread the gospel of poetry, it has also published the work of well-known artists such as Phillip Levine and Sharon Olds.

I first learned of Rattle by reading the contributors’ notes of a journal that had published a poem of mine. In the last couple of years, I have been compiling a list of publications pulled from the contributors’ notes of magazines where my work has also appeared. My hope is that by sending submissions to journals from this list, I am targeting publications that are at least theoretically “in my league” – in terms of both quality and type of work appreciated by the editors of those journals.

Each issue of Rattle features a theme (recent themes include tributes to the sonnet and African-American poets), with roughly half of the issue’s poems devoted to that theme. Each issue also includes a substantial section of “open poetry” as well as essays and interviews with poets such as Robert Pinsky. The provocative themes, essays, and interviews would seem to demonstrate that besides publishing new voices, the editors of Rattle are devoted to providing a forum for an ongoing dialogue about the nature and purpose of poetry.

The cover of the most recent issue features what appears to be a skeleton shaking or embracing another skeleton, and I think this serves as a good illustration of the magazine’s aesthetic. They select poetry that gets to the core of what it means to be human, that awakens us from a collective slumber (or death) through a directness in language and a startling sense of awareness. The editors state that they don’t believe one should have to be a scholar to understand poetry, and the work featured in this journal testifies to the editors’ desire to recapture the power of poetry as a direct appeal to the human spirit. At the same time, the editors do not seek to “dumb down” poetry, as evidenced by the sonnet theme and the inclusion of poems with rather heavy allusion. The poems selected for Rattle often bring to mind Robert Frost’s observation that “poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”

Here are a few selected lines and poems recently published in the magazine:

NASCAR

Not rolling in liquid fire
or pulled apart by physics.
Not between commercials.

But the way an old dog
half-blind
noses around and around

some quiet
apple-scented
chosen ground.

--Mike White

HOW SHE DESCRIBED HER EX-HUSBAND
WHEN THE POLICE CALLED

He’s the man who wants to live on Park Place
but can only afford Virginia, the Pennsylvania line
running through his backyard, fast as a chance.

He’s the hat who owes a luxury tax.

He’s a no-trump bid without all the aces. A queen
finesse,
eight ever, nine never, that fails to fall
into the dummy just right.

-- Martha Clarkson (only part of poem quoted)

A VISIT FROM MY BROTHER

I am peeing out my left ear, spraying green jello all over
the kitchen cabinet. When I cough, a miniature train flies out
of my mouth and sticks to the ceiling, circling slowly. So I
carry my dead brother upstairs, lay him on the ironing board,
and massage his open wounds. Within minutes, he jumps to
his feet and sings a little song in Japanese. He begins to
dance, shaking his skinny bootie, mimicking Michael
Jackson. Suddenly, five gallons of Guinness appear in two
large buckets. My brother takes one and I take the other. We
submerge our heads into the beer and gulp, slobber, come up
gasping for breath, and dive down again, laughing like we
used to, like there’s no tomorrow, like there’s nothing I
wouldn’t do to bring him back to me.

-- David James

Each poem -- even the last one, a prose poem that appears almost nonsensical on first reading – grounds itself in the imagery and materialism of modern life (Guinness beer, board games, NASCAR), arguably the material life of the lower-middle classes. Yet the careful attention to structure and metaphor, as well as an overall refined quality of technique, set these poems apart from the gritty-literal qualities of, say, Bukowski.

Rattle reads submissions year-round and publishes two print editions annually, as well as two free supplementary electronic newsletters with highlights from each issue. They do not accept previously published poems, but they do “encourage” simultaneous submissions. They accept submissions through snail mail and electronic mail and ask that poets send no more than five poems. Payment is two copies of the magazine.

Here is the contact info:
Rattle
Poetry for the 21st Century
12411 Ventura Blvd
Studio City, CA 91604
Phone: (818) 505-6777
E-mail: timgreen rattle com
Web: http://www.rattle.com/

The editors seem so generous in their attitude toward poetry, I believe I’m going to go submit a few poems right now -- just for grins.

-- D. Brian Anderson