Unearthly flickers, like steam snaking off the cup, new words stretch their dancers’ legs, impossible angles all fluid yet geometric, as a horse in the first stretch around the fogbound track. All the way up to the balcony, ideas limber up the way I once heard arias rising from the steaming espresso machines as they wheezed into production at seven, when even the campanile hadn’t yet penetrated the haze. Morning thought hasn’t fully emerged, world…
I finally got off the couch and began to submit work again. To start the year off right, I sent out several batch es of poems to some favorite magazines, and then rashly decided to make a run again at Threepenny Review. This has become a weird experiment. The last two times I submitted, they popped my reply envelope back so fast it broke the sound barrier. Well, a week later I got my new…
You have chosen, if you’re reading this. Day before yesterday I sent out a new packet of poems to four different magazines. Poems were all finished, no tweaking needed. All I had to do was select the four poems for a suite, select Rattapallax, Threepenny Review, Atlanta Review and Many Mountains Moving. I had to print cover letters, stuff the batches into envelopes, stamp them and walk them to the mailbox. Time spent: 2-1/4 hours.…
You’re Special Agent Dale Cooper. You’re often too brilliant for people to really follow, but your infectious enthusiasm makes up for the fact that you’re frequently incomprehensible. You are smart, intuitive, clear-headed, compassionate, and cute as hell — about your only flaw is your insane coffee consumption. Which Twin Peaks character are you? brought to you by Quizilla and thanks to poet Kelli Russell Agodon, whose blog never ceases to amuse … Visit https://racheldacus.net for…
Recently I was party to several discussions about poetry books sales. Ever a hot topic among the 2,017 people who actually read poetry in the U.S. Bill Moyers was about the last media figure to pay serious attention to the art. In his rapturous television series, The Language of Life, Moyers made it seem like anyone in America with a high school education could get the hang of appreciating poetry – if only they entered…
We lived close enough to Edwards Air Force Base for the test flight sonic booms to rattle our windows. So I know what it’s like to feel the shudder of the new space age being born. In an excellent article, Washington Post Guy Gugliotta has written about the king of the early rockets, the Saturn V, which lifted men to the moon and remains, “a key artifact of the space race,” according to Allan A.…
They tell you there will be a day after, you grow up and realize on your own that there will be a day after, but when it comes, you are unprepared for it. The day after Christmas, the day after your book is published, the day after you graduate, the day after you’re married. It’s not the day you planned. Nor is it the poem you planned. This is the first step in any creative…
Here’s a Christmas excerpt from one of my favorite memoirists, Dylan Thomas. A Child’s Christmas in Wales is on my top-ten-to-take-to-a-desert-isle reading list, along with Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, and Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood. Here’s a smidge from Dylan Thomas to cheer your wassail, or whatever: All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they…
Nothing quite like a discussion of money during the holidays to perk up the conversation! In case any of you are considering the option of getting a writer’s grant, I found a useful resource on grants available to writers here: Grants for Individual Writers Among the many links, The Foundation Center’s is very useful, providing not only further links to grantmaking organizations, but also a bibliography and periodicals list. I especially like the Funds for…
A list you might like if you are writing or have written a memoir. These small press publishers are interested in publishing memoirs: Cavan Kerry Press Unbridled Books The Permanent Press Soft Skull Press The Lighthouse Press University of Nevada Books California presses: Macadam Cage Books North Atlantic Books Heyday Books Visit https://racheldacus.net for more information and writing by Rachel Dacus.