–> I’m going to have to create a chapbook of bird poems, I think. Lesser and greater egrets at the local creek, hummingbirds, woodpeckers, mourning doves, crows all have made their way into my work. If I count up the number of bird poems I’ve written it probably could form a whole book! This one is from my new book, Gods of Water and Air, available at Amazon. As Yearning Is Red Sudden as…
Diane Lockward’s wonderful book to jump-start your creative process, The Crafty Poet, has had a great mention in Poets & Writers as one of the “best books for writers.” I’m pleased to have a poem of mine included in this juicy craft collection, “Worst,” under the Prompt: Missing You. Diane’s prompts and tips are richly illustrated with poems from so many poets I love I can’t begin to name them all. I especially love the…
On this All Souls Day, I offer a poem about one kind of afterlife (there are many) from Gods of Water and Air: Smiling Back from the Afterlife I meet my father for breakfast in some life after Alzheimer’s. He smiles: Are you still my daughter? The first sick joke from the afterlife begins on the phone. I say, I regret that I am. His skull knobbed yellow and blue, bruised from an unremembered mishap,…
Thank you, Marc Flayton, for your review of my book on Amazon! I especially like this: “The journey of life contains many aspects. One is the parent-child relationship. If it turns out your parent is as creative and as diligent in their art as Picasso, you will enjoy Gods of Water and Air. It pits a creative and talented daughter with a creative and talented father — the fireworks fly.” Sometimes you wonder if people…
Poet and editor C.E. Chaffin was a fixture in my weekly poetry life for a number of years, thanks to the Melic Review’s Roundtable and also his appearances at the Alsop Review’s Gazebo. These two poetry workshop sites helped me shape my writing in the 1990s, when I began to shift from focusing on prose to poetry. C.E. passed away unexpectedly in the last week. I remember reading with him at a reading John Amen…
Thank you, Barbara Ellen Sorensen, for a wonderful review of my new book on Amazon! She says: “This is language that burns and pivots. Acutely cognizant of the inextricable link between beauty and death, desire and hunger, Dacus grasps words with warrior strength and molds them tightly until they pop open into molten surprises.” Delighted! Visit https://racheldacus.net for more information and writing by Rachel Dacus.
Excerpt from an essay in my new book, Gods of Water and Air: Eight en Croix, Four on a Side, Every Day Until You Die At age thirteen, you need something glorious in your life just to breathe. My mother was at Long Beach State afternoons earning her teaching credential, and Dad was at his new apartment. Everything was changing, so I needed a daily dose of tradition. I found it at Rosalie and Alva’s…
From Gods of Water and Air. I write a lot about the sea, living along California’s coastline all my life. Monet’s Normandy paintings spoke to me of the coastline I know so well, and inspired this. Monet At Pourville He hasn’t quite abandoned the shore for the celestial. He leaves the viewer a toehold on the sand. He has yet to go sailing with the gods of water and air. Confronted by the vast, he…
So many of the poems in my new book, Gods of Water and Air, are connected to the sea, beside which I spent my childhood, that I had to reflect the twin elements of wind and water in the title, as essential to my consciousness. This poem from the book was started on Kauai, where I felt the ocean’s presence on my body constantly, and daily bowed to its salt gods. The Salt Gods On…
I’m glad I included poems and essays in Gods of Water and Air that focus on my 1950s childhood in the southern California fishing town of San Pedro. Decades of life later, I still feel part of an immigrant community, with its self-discipline and traditions reeled in tight as a reel before casting a line to the waters. I learned diversity early: the simple fact of differences in language, skin, hair, eyes, religion, jobs. That…