Poets and Poems: Dan Rattelle and "Painting Over the Growth Chart"

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.

Poets and Poems: Dan Rattelle and “The Commonwealth”

Poet Dan Rattelle reminds us that there is more to the idea of “place” than geographic location. In The Commonwealth, a chapbook of 20 engaging and easily accessible poems, Rattelle accept and explores the broad definition of place – a living, breathing idea that embraces community, memory, people, family, friends, and the natural environment. In this broader sense, place becomes self-definition and self-identity. 

I read these poems and was prompted to do a count. Over the course of a lifetime, I’ve lived in 15 dwellings in six communities, which, compared to some, is only a faint echo of the famous rootlessness of post-World War II America. Yet if you asked me where my home was, my first thought is always New Orleans, where I spent almost all my growing-up years and where I often joined my mother’s large and extensive family rambling over the landscape. Yet I haven’t physically lived there in almost half a century.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.