Rust Belt Poets

Conversation with
Ken Meisel

The Fall 2017 issue is dedicated to poets of the Rust Belt, a region of the United States stretching from the Great Lakes to the upper Midwest. The name refers to the deindustrialization, population loss, and urban decay due to the shrinking of its once-powerful industrial sector. One explanation for the results of the 2016 U.S. elections was the shifting political attitude of this region, and we thought we’d check in and find a first-hand account of what’s going on through the poet’s eye.  Twenty-one poets contributed to this  feature, chosen from over 2,000 submissions. In the conversation section, editor Timothy Green—himself a Rust Belt poet—talks to Detroit-based psychotherapist and poet Ken Meisel. Having lived in the Rust Belt his entire life, Meisel offers deep insights into the region’s psyche, and discusses a range of other topics, from marital love to a model for turning his art into charity.

The issue also includes seventeen poets in another eclectic open section.

	Rust Belt Poets
	Steve Abbott	This Should Be a Good Poem
	Caroline Barnes	Pardoning the Turkey
	Cameron Barnett	New Fruit Humming
	Milton Bates	Coyote Country
	George Bilgere	Pancake Dilemma
	Sarah Carson	Six Reasons I Can’t Answer the Door for You …
	Eric Chiles	Medi-Maze
	Nic Custer	Work Is What It Is
	Rachel Custer	Kid
	Jim Daniels	Prodigal Son Returns to Warren, Michigan
	Todd Davis	Cracks
	Sarah Wylder Deshpande	The Patron Saint of Boredom
	William Evans	I Say Cathedral When I Mean Gunpowder
	Kelly Fordon	Who Am I?
	K. H.	The Visit
	Kamal E. Kimball	I Hear America Rusting
	Nancy Krygowski	Weed Whacker
	Cade Leebron	New Guide to the Quasi-Political
	Ken Meisel	Art Installation
	Christine Rhein	In Detroit, What Counts as Grace
	Ed Ruzicka	Palimony
	Laszlo Slomovits	After the Reading by the Famous Poet
	Karen J. Weyant	Where Girls Still Ride the Beds …
	Poetry
	Joseph A. Chelius	Stockboy
	Edward Derby	Andrew Describes How to Slaughter Chickens
	Lovett Finnegan	When I Run an Art Museum I Will Feature …
	Jim Hanlen	Three Things
	Zachary Hester	Elegy for the Child Who Did Not Die of SIDS
	Donna Hilbert	Rambler
	Ananda Lima	Line
	Bob Lucky	It Was Too Dark for a Light …
	Herbert Woodward Martin	That Summer
	Andrew Miller	The Bees and the Lightning
	Behzad Molavi	X
	Al Ortolani	The Taco Boat
	Li Qingzhao	Spring at Wuling
	Lee Rossi	Microcosmology
	Michael Sears	My Mother and I Beat a Dog
	Matthew Buckley Smith	Undergrads
	Dennis Trudell	A Few Minutes
	Conversation
	Ken Meisel
	Cover Art
	Mark Hillringhouse