Jeffrey Bean: Form, Music, Bach, and Poetry | Rattlecast 352

Jeffrey Bean joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, invented poetic forms, music, and his latest collection, Everywhere, Everywhere, winner of the 2024 Vern Rutsala Book Prize. A poet and professor of English at Central Michigan University, Jeffrey appears in the Invented Forms section of Rattle’s Summer 2026 issue with “Bach’s Bones,” part of a new series of poems inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach. In this episode, we discuss the quatrain ghazal and the possibilities of combining traditional poetic forms, Bach and music as influences on poetry, rhyme and formal poetry, the poems of Everywhere, Everywhere, and the craft of writing poems that make the ordinary strange and new. We’ll also open the lines for this week’s prompt-based poetry reading. This Week’s Prompt: Think of something you didn’t expect to open up but did. Make it risky! Next Week’s Prompt: Write a contemporary epic poem. 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 Find more about Jeffrey Bean here: https://www.jeffreybeanpoet.com/ 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.