When I read The Commonweath: Poems, a chapbook by Dan Rattelle, I was struck by the poet’s sense of place, whether it was a Puritan churchyard, a bar in Scotland, or even a cemetery. The poems had both a simplicity and a sense of wonder, both of which were rooted in, for lack of a better term, localism. For if the poems had anything in common, it was rootedness.
That’s no surprise, given that Rattelle has lived all of his life in western Massachusetts, except for the time he was attending the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He was working on his MFA degree, which he’s now earned, and he returned to western Massachusetts. I understand his poetic interest in cemeteries, because that’s what he does now, managing two of them when he’s not writing poetry.
His MFA thesis at St. Andrews is entitled “The Meetinghouse.” It includes many of the poems of his chapbook. And it’s become his first full collection of poetry, Painting Over the Growth Chart.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
“A Noiseless Patient Spider,” poem by Walt Whitman – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Approaching Zero – poem by A.M. Juster at The Hudson Review.
Ozymandias – poem by Percy Shelley at Rabbit Room Poetry.
The train – poem by Rachel Hadas at The New Criterion.
Last Saturday in May – poem by Paul Wittenberger at Paul’s Substack.
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