You get the feeling that Josh is a laid back kind of guy. And, after even a few brief moments of conversation, you realize that he is kind in the most genuine way... through honesty and an unabashed openness.
Currently, Josh is the coordinator for Creative Writing at Mesa Community College, and the District Fine Arts Coordinator for the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction. He teaches both poetry and fiction courses in addition to offering one-on-one counseling with students enrolled in the Creative Writing Certificate Program.
While those things ought to be said, that’s not what we’re really here to talk about.
To really get to know a person or poet, delving into their work can be a great place to start. I found Some Nights No Cars At All to be both comfortable and easygoing, even its melancholy, like the first cup of coffee in the morning. It starts with a scene that is softly heartbreaking, but don’t worry, he’ll break your heart thoroughly later.
It seems that within the first few poems Rathkamp is trying to ease the reader into an idea... how easy it can be to fall into something and how easy it is in falling to be crushed.
There are also moments of sincere bliss found in simplicity. For example, in "Older Girls" the speaker places his ear against a girl's chest, listening for rain. However, these moments are admittedly few and feel at times like the quick breath before a blood draw. You know it’s going to sting and pinch in a minute, but there is one last moment of peace you can take. It is this sensation that makes this book so refreshing: its unrelenting theme of growth through pain. Rathkamp tackles the large tragedies, like abortion and separation, but also the twinges that we so often forget, returning left behind CDs to an ex, a bad tattoo, an accidentally lost wedding band.
You can pick up Josh Rathkamp’s book Some Nights No Cars At All at Changing Hands bookstore or order it online. Other recent works of his have been published in Superstition Review and Meridian, with upcoming publications in Arts & Letters and Poet Lore. Josh himself, recommends Winter Stars by Larry Levis, and suggests every living person read Whitman’s "Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry."
In the end, Josh’s words are the ones I’d use to describe his book... it lifts and crashes and, as he admits in "From that Distance," these are not our storms, but they feel like our own. We lift and crash with him, simply, with grace and beauty.
When asked, Josh Rathkamp can recite the last three lines of the first poem in his collection of poems Some Nights No Cars At All. To me, this seems impressive or, at least, something that shows dedication to his work. The lines, from the poem "After a Long Separation", introduce us to a fallen nest, but with the sweeping possibility of recreating all things, particularly the things we ourselves destroy. This emerges as an excellent example of the cringing honesty that exudes from not only Rathkamp's work but from the poet as well.
