Painting Over the Growth Chart

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Dan Rattelle's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Painting Over the Growth Chart </em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>is an accomplished and engaging collection shot through with a recurrent sense of dislocation of not getting there from here dispelled by vivid moments of transcendence as in Believer's Baptism when the grave was swept away and water ran like blood down your thigh. Rattelle displays a keenly felt awareness of life as it is lived and lost as in the touching title poem when childhood growth notches that bicker up the door jamb are painted over so any sign they ever lived here is blotted out. These appealing poems hang between hope and anguish always reaching for consolation in friendship fond memories faith and a warming glass of cheer. Like the potter he celebrates who pulls as though from nothing / the cup Rattelle summons memorable poem after memorable poem.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>-Ernest Hilbert</strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> author of </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Storm Swimmer</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> and Winner of the </span><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>2023 Meringoff Poetry Award from the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Although punctuated by some vivid postcards from Scotland Dan Rattelle's book is rooted in New England offering a searching view of the region and its people that is unsparing yet humane. His work is formally various; he excels both in cleanly sculpted free verse and in adroitly rhymed stanzas. Throughout no words are wasted and every word tells. Some lyrics read like narrative fragments haunted by what has been withheld from the page; others like the brilliant series on tools and implements invest their inanimate subjects with the power of heritage and even streaks of personality. With forebears like Frost unavoidably in the background Rattelle's first book revivifies traditional forms and scenes with exacting craft and distinctive insights. He has followed what Frost called the old way to be new and his reward is equally that of the reader.</span></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>-Robert B. Shaw</strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> author of </span><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(42 42 42 1)>Emily Dickinson Professor of English Emeritus Mount Holyoke College</span></p><p><br></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Dan Rattelle </strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>earned his MFA at the University of St Andrews but other than his too-brief stay there he is a lifelong resident of Western Massachusetts and has no plans to leave. </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Painting Over the Growth Chart</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is his first full-length poetry collection and is a version of his MFA Thesis </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The Meetinghouse</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. He currently manages two cemeteries in his hometown.</span></p>