In Memoriam: Rochelle Ratner (1948-2008)

Page 15 July–August 2008 I’m sorry to hear about Rochelle’s passing. I only knew her briefly in the late sixties, and she was vivacious and enthusiastic about poetry. She never did lose her enthusiasm for poetry, and she stayed true to it. Here is a salute to her spirit! —Andrei Codrescu No one from ABR’s distinguished history was more supportive, instructive, and flat-out excited about ABR’s relocation to UHV than Rochelle. She shared with our South Texas editorial team many anecdotes from ABR’s past, and gave us an infectious sense of the possibilities for ABR’s future. However, more than anything else, she helped ABR to thrive and succeed in its new home. For this, all of us at UHV owe her an immense debt of gratitude. Thank you, Rochelle. —Jeffrey R. Di Leo It’s difficult to imagine American Book Review without Rochelle Ratner. For over thirty years, she served this review as contributor, editor, and indispensable guide. Because she was a successful writer herself, Rochelle understood the pressures and frustrations of trying to be a serious writer in a frivolous culture. Maybe that’s why she always sided with writers, while constantly holding them accountable to the highest standards of their craft. More than most, she preserved ABR’s original ambition to be a journal produced and edited by writers for writers. We’ll miss Rochelle’s steady guidance and her fruitful collaboration with reviewers and editors. But her animating presence will continue to influence ABR, abiding in the white spaces between the lines, an enduring lodestone for this journal and the literary culture Rochelle championed and tirelessly served. —Charles B. Harris Rochelle and I served together on the National Book Critics Circle board, where she will be remembered as an unflinching, positive voice for literature, poetry in particular. I remember how she strapped herself into her little car and navigated me to my destination after one board meeting with a damnthe -torpedoes approach to the insanity of driving in Manhattan: Just tell me where you need to go, and I’ll get you there. In her work as a writer and editor, she showed similar determination, forthrightness, and generosity of spirit. She will be missed. —Ellen Heltzel Rochelle Ratner’s untimely passing sucks. If Ron Sukenick, John Tytell, and Charles Russell were the big bad brains at ABR (and they were), Rochelle was its sensitive heart, its conscience. Rochelle was the one who for so many years did everything—she handled the day-to-day details, did the things no one else wanted to. I helped her with all that for a few years, but it was Rochelle who cared, worried, hustled, persuaded, and acted every day on what the right course was for this magazine at any given moment . If she disagreed with Ron about something, he’d usually end up doing it her way. Rochelle wrote dozens of brilliant reviews and essays for these pages. She was a prolific and prize-winning poet and one of the warmest and smartest persons ever. But there is no one—repeat, no one—who put more of her heart and soul into the direction and development of American Book Review than Rochelle Ratner. —Russell Hoover What I always loved about Rochelle was her literary and existential activism and autonomy, how she embraced the idea of the small press from the moment in 1969 when, on the cusp of her twentyfirst birthday, she crossed into New York from New Jersey and began writing poetry columns for the East Village Other, how nine years later she joined ABR and worked industriously right up until her death to make it a better publication, how she conducted writing workshops in underserved communities like The Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and the NYC chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, how she celebrated her child-free existence with pride and persistence, how she let her own pareddown poetry, prose, and photography lead her into the corners of the family and the city that frequently went unvoiced, taking, as she went, a certain amount of cockeyed reality for granted. Lately, whenever my partner Andi and I visited New York...