Rattan's short stories are filled with humor and positive observations of charming characters with penetrating insights that amuse and entertain the reader: The math teacher "As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more clearly, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folk of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) "Shall I tell you what I consider to be wrong? What I consider to be wrong is that most of the people in the Western Hemisphere are stark, staring mad, and the few people who recognize this are regarded as lunatics by all those stark, staring mad people." Ashley Montegue from remarks at the University of Wisconsin Symposium on "Alternative Futures for America" 1971. Sometimes deciphering the world for readers won't do. We must make or create the world for readers. How? I am almost never sure. Sometimes I have moments of clarity, but a writer may create a world that we come to live in and know in our everyday creation of our lives. Minuscule creation is probably enough. Collected Prose of a Poet Cleatus Rattan Read these offerings. You will not forget them. Jim Linebarger, Emeritus Professor of English and Poet in Residence at the University of North Texas, is the author of Five Faces and The Poetry of John Berryman.
About the Author: Cleatus Rattan, holder of the Mayborn Chair of Arts and Science at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor as Professor of English, is a former Poet Laureate of Texas and a Distinguished Alumnus of Texas A&M University at Commerce who is the author of five collections of poetry. His book The Border (Texas Review Press 2002) received the Texas Review Poetry Prize and was later selected for study by University Interscholastic League for High School students across the state of Texas for UIL competition in literary criticism. Rattan is the first living poet to be so honored. National Public Radio interviewed Dr. Cleatus Rattan and asked him to read four of his poems for the second inauguration of the President Bush, the younger. Rattan attended seven universities and earned five degrees from four of them: Southern Methodist University, the University of North Texas (two degrees), Hardin Simmons University, and Texas A&M University-Commerce. Rattan claims not to be well educated, but he is, he says, frequently educated. Take Your Time Coming Home (Texas Review Press 2005) was entered for the Pulitzer Prize. Funeral for Sparrows, published by Trilobite Press 2007, was sponsored by the University of North Texas English Department and Friends of the Library at UNT.