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…
I’m at that point where the book leaves my hands completely and goes to print! This mixed bag of 135 pages of poems, essays, and a one-act play will be available in a few weeks. Mixed bag of excitement, nerves, and … more excitement! Here’s another excerpted poem, “Scared Birds,” published in Deep Water Literary Journal’s inaugural issue. I’m very pleased! My poem “Matriarchs” will also be published this month in Drunken Boat. Visit https://racheldacus.net…
On Yom Kippur, in honor of my dear friend Sara, who as a teenager fought in the forests of Eastern Europe. On a day of atonement, I look up to my friend’s courage and hope to find more of it within myself this year. Chewing on ‘Jew’ When I go, it will be with Chagall’s angel,the one that hangs over the couch, floating on teardrop wings. Her candelabra keeps away the midnight forest that lives…
1. Hide under the covers a little longer every morning, except that a puppy is your new alarm clock. Get her to hide under there with you. 2. Dither around about the list of review copies to send out. Read poetry book reviews. Cut down your list. 3. Write a new poem and disavow everything you’re ever written before this one. 4. Change your name. Consider a last-minute pseudonym for the book. Take a nap.…