Category: Uncategorized

When you spend most of your life in midair, how do you travel through time differently than someone does when spending your time seated among a throng of thoughts? Most of my days and nights are spent sitting and thinking. It must look like an odd life to a hummingbird. Like a sloth of some upright kind. But I think time moves faster for me than the hummingbird, who dives to the feeder and pokes…

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Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, and Christmas share a common theme: divine Light. When the short days and winter weather keep us more indoors, it’s natural to turn within more too. Poetry is such a joy at this enclosed season! I have a wonderful stack of books on my table from recent readings and friends’ publications. I’ve so far spent two solid days just reading — what a real writer’s treat. For holiday gift giving (through December…

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I’m so pleased to have an April Guest here at Rocket Kids: Erica Goss, Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, and the host of Word to Word, a show about poetry. She has a wonderful new book out that will spur your own creativity: Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). Welcome, Erica! Activating Your Core Strength as a Writer By Erica Goss We’ve all been there: faced with a blank page,…

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With so much activity honoring our beautiful art confined to the one hectic month of April (taxes and poetry?), I find myself in awe of those who are doing the Poem-A-Day challenge, giving readings, doing book reviews, and creating poetry events. NoPoWriMo, the official site for the 30 poems in 30 days challenge, lists resources. Today’s is The Big Poetry Giveaway, which I’m going to participate in. I’m still figuring out the other books, besides…

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Hidden Vault 1. Spring Forward The government’s at it again, tampering time and we must stagger behind, wishing Salvador Dali minutes would lag instead of broad-jump. April, the month of taxes and poetry. Light trails us like a street urchin dragging his bags. We are thanked for our gifts to government with jet-lag and loss of easeful dark, pumped with big-top minutes and forward-swapped. But where do they keep the acrobat hour? I find in…

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It’s a delicious Monday for poets. Today is the official launch of the First Water, the first print anthology from Pirene’s Fountain. I’m lucky to have a poem in it, alongside poets I much admire, such as Kim Addonizio, Jane Hirshfield, Paul Hostovsky, Dorianne Laux, and J.P. Dancing Bear. Thank you, Ami Kaye and the Glass Pyre Press/Pirene’s Fountain staff. Can’t wait to get my copy! The evolution of this wonderful online journal into a…

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I’m thrilled to be a part of this great new collection, First Water, from Pirene’s Fountain. Publisher Ami Kaye selected a poem from my book Gods of Water and Air. The poem is “Chopin Reigns.” You’ll have to get the anthology to see it! Visit https://racheldacus.net for more information and writing by Rachel Dacus.

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A lot of people who have read my new book, Gods of Water and Air, have remarked on my bravery in sharing personal and intimate moments of my life. It has surprised me, this compliment, because I think “That’s just what writers do–they talk about their interior dimensions and experiences in a way we normally don’t in conversation.” It got me thinking, and then I found a wonderful essay on this topic. Marie Gauthier, in…

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I love the new neurological research. It’s turning up all sorts of things that make the yellow journalists look like media whore sleazebags with their terrible-terrible news. Here’s a new one that caught my fancy — reading poetry may activate your brain more than reading prose. A study at The University of Exeter showed through MRI monitoring that brains are differently activated when reading poetry than when reading prose: specifically, brains are more lively reading…

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