Border, The

From sonnet to free verse, from rime to slant rime, Cleatus Rattan's poems gather the past to inspect the future. His efforts to generate emotion transport the reader to vivid views of a family on the edge of new ways of examining the next stage of lives carefully planned for emotional possibilities. In the title poem, which ends this collection, Rattan allows his readers to "Motor through familiar lands/ and see the comfortable/ well developed plans./ Note a warping red gable/ and high cloud-filled unending skies./ Pass through flat lands until you see/ the end--and old state with no guard./ Then turn to home and tell no lies/ about an easy relaxing journey, / but hold the vision in high regard." Rattan's lyrics wield a powerful musical dictation to the rhythm in the dance from border to border.

"The Border is a hearty collection of memories by a poet with an eye for detail and a sensitivity for resuscitating the emotions of the past with artistry. Cleatus Rattan's smooth Southwestern voice brings a warm charm to his litany of elegies for places, mentors, old friends, and relatives." --Dave Parsons, "Cleatus Rattan's poems just keep getting better and better, year after year. They range widely from the academy to the ranch to the Marines to an adored and adoring family. Rattan's poems are live old friends you hope will never die." --Jim Linebarger, "Wise and savvy, Cleatus Rattan's The Border re-creates with delicacy, humor, and craftsmanship allegories from the hard-scrabble living out West Texas way. Not surprisingly, the truths out there are the same as the truths everywhere, in any time, in any heart." --Jack Myers

A former marine, CLEATUS RATTAN ranches a hundred miles west of Fort Worth near the little town of Cisco, a small town of some three thousand souls cinched by the Bible Belt. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Free of the Flesh and 130 Miles to Dallas, winner of the 1982 Texas Review Poetry Prize; in 1996 he won the Mesquite Prize and in 2002 the New Texas Poetry Prize.