Rattle :: NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines

Rattle

Poetry for the 21st Century

About Rattle: Rattle is the journal for people who love poetry—whether they realize it yet, or not.

Publisher’s Description: For over a decade people have been discovering a love of poetry through Rattle. Each issue is a demonstration that it doesn’t take a scholar to be moved by the written word, that great literature is something everyone can enjoy. The lawyer, the landscaper, the academic and housewife all share our pages. We put the voices of Dunn and Levine and Laux flush against names you’ve never heard, but won’t forget. We’ve been featured in Best American Poetry, but we’re most proud of the readers we touch, the writers unafraid to make noise.

Lost in the literary shuffle is the simple truth that language is moving, that life is compelling, full of burdens and joys we all share. Published quarterly, each perfect-bound issue is 100 pages of poetry, essays, interviews with heart. Poetry should make you laugh or cry; it should enlighten and entertain. Our mission at Rattle is to cull the 10,000 submissions we receive each year into a collection that will stay with you long after you’ve set it down, a collection you’ll return to again and again. Share in the intimacy of experience only poetry allows. Listen closely: What makes you rattle?

Recent issues:

Rattle #40 is our first-ever entirely open issue. With no theme to consider, we simply chose our favorite 42 poems from the 30,000 that had been submitted to us over the previous six months, with poems covering pop culture and politics, love and lust, truth in beauty, and tragic violence. Trayvon Martin, mass shootings, and Moe Szyslak (of The Simpsons) calling the Listen Lady. Canned coats, lost mermaids, crepe myrtles, and the “ridiculous big” Fried Elvis sandwich. These are poems of horror and humor and heart, with a new story on every page—plus an interview with Ellen Bass.

Rattle’s Spring 2013 issue is devoted entirely to the work of Southern Poets. The cultural fabric of the American South has been changing rapidly in the 21st century, and many of the old assumptions about Southern literature—an emphasis on bucolic landscapes, history, family, and so on—no longer hold. So what is it that makes a poet Southern? As always, we’ve let the writers speak for themselves, selecting the best 39 poems that we could find from over 10,000 submissions. Helping us along the way is an intimate and entertaining conversation with Georgia State Poet Laureate David Bottoms.

Issue #38 also includes a large selection of open poetry, interviews with formalists Rhina P. Espaillat and Timothy Steele, and the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize winners. In addition to the $5,000 winner, Heidi Shuler’s “Trials of a Teenage Transvestite’s Single Mother,” subscribers are invited to vote for the first annual $1,000 Readers’ Choice Award from among the finalists.

 

last updated 6/03/13