Gerald Stern won the Robert Frost Medal — the top prize of the Poetry Society of America, awarded for for “distinguished lifetime service to American poetry.” Here’s Stern reading his lovely, joyous poem Bolero. Visit https://racheldacus.net for more information and writing by Rachel Dacus.
Aldrich Press has created a beautiful new trailer for my book! It’s my reading of “Flight,” the first poem in my book. It’s on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KaXVkL8cac&feature=youtu.be I looked at an interesting array of poetry book trailers, and was most taken with Sandra Beasley’s single poem videos, so I decided on a single poem reading. It was fun to make, finding images and music from royalty-free sources. If I were trying to decide whether to buy…
I received a great literary Christmas gift among many this year. This one was an offer to include in my daily writing practice an idea suggested by someone else, a launching pass (appropriate for a rocket kid). So today, having a minor stomach bug and needing to rest, I decided to try one and challenge a friend to join me. This is the prompt for December 26: You can see everything in the universe in…
My thoughts on reading Emerson: his lectures and essays are more poetic than his poems. In prose he flows, but in his poems, he hews to a formal standard that makes his writing stiff, even self-conscious, while he’s relaxed and exuberantly expressive in the essays. Too bad free verse didn’t come along earlier so Emerson could use that expressive vehicle. And no wonder he admired the daring breakout of Whitman’s poetry! “Commodity” is the essay…