Matthew Olzmann joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about contemporary poetry, humor, love poems, imagination, and what makes a poem connect with readers. The author of Mezzanines, Contradictions in the Design, and Constellation Route, Olzmann is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Kundiman. His fourth collection, An Oral History of the Flat Earth, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2027.
Olzmann has appeared several times in Rattle, most famously with “Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem,” one of the most-read poems in Rattle’s history and a love poem that has continued to find new audiences online. In this episode, we discuss humor and surprise in poetry, love poems, memorable images, the strange places poems can begin, and how poetry can move between the absurd and the profound. We’ll also talk about “Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem,” Olzmann’s other work and books, and the craft of writing poems that readers want to return to and share. As always, we’ll open the lines for this week’s prompt-based poetry reading.
Find more about Matthew Olzmann here:
https://matthewolzmann.com/
This Week’s Prompt:
Write a hot haibun.
Next Week's Prompt:
Write a poem that’s a page or longer, and then edit it down to a maximum of 14 lines. Include both versions of your poem in the submission, with the shorter poem first.
Submit your poem through Submittable by midnight Sunday for a chance to be invited on the show:
https://rattle.submittable.com/submit/269309/rattlecast-prompt-poems-online
The Rattlecast livestreams every Monday on YouTube, Facebook, and X, then becomes available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.
