Cheryl Snell put up a nice notice about my book, Another Circle of Delight, on her blog Shiva’s Arms. Look for Cheryl’s books there, including the forthcoming Shiva’s Arms, a novel. I always like novels by poets. It’s almost always a guaranteed good read when prose is written by someone who loves words. As I recall, it was poet and writer Annie Dillard who defined the difference: if you love sentences, write prose; if you…
It’s addictive, it’s vocabulary-building, it feeds hungry people and it’s free! What could be more appealing than Free Rice? I have only reached a high score of 48, though I understand no one has gone over 50. I promptly dropped back down to a consistent 46, which is still respectable. And I’m learning near words I’ll never use in poems. As they’re too abstruse. Oh, there’s another one. The new wave of philanthropy is online,…
Blue’s Cruzio Cafe — what poetry will look like in the 21st century, after we get a little farther into the new millennium. Check out “What My Father Loved About Melmac” by David Alpaugh (itself a poem about a paradigm shift) and Marcia Adams’ “All the Difference.” And for another forward look at the new ways we might be reading poetry in times to come, MiPoesias. Also on Bob Marcacci’s The Countdown, which in Episode…
My new chapbook is out! Another Circle of Delight has hit the stands (well, okay this blog and my website). I did a preview reading in Crockett at Valona Cafe a couple months ago. Publisher David Alpaugh (Small Poetry Press) found the cover art, which thrilled me. Click on the cover art to see a bigger version. The title and cover art refer to the keynote poem (is that an actual term?), “A Walk After…
Blogging and other literary activities have been severely interrupted by caring for my failing canine companion Keegan and his death last Sunday, October 28. The only words that have come to me in the last few weeks are those of praise for a phenomenal person in a furry suit. (Keegan’s the guy on the left.)Here are two from my book Earth Lessons: DOG RUNNING The dog runs nose to groundas we run with our eyes…
I don’t usually blog politico, but I find it a moving event that the Nobel Award was given to Al Gore for his work raising awareness of our global climate crisis. It seems a very good thing that he didn’t wind up being President. If he had, we might not know what hot water (hot weather) we’re in. Destiny is a funny commodity. You can’t see it forward, only in a rear view mirror. What…
Autumn Sky Poetry – a smart, fresh online magazine. Some excellent work in this new issue, and a beautiful visual experience, with well-chosen photos and eye-friendly colors and layout. Editor Christine Klocek-Lim in the recent issue likens good poetry to carrying things when on crutches: economy and focus are paramount. Well, she put it better than that, but the current issue lives up to that idea. Good images, readable, vivid work. Her blog has excellent…
Got crit? Everyone does. No poet reads a book of poetry and just says to herself, “huh.” But few of us write down our responses in any literary form. Few magazines carry poetry book reviews. One suspects few readers read them. Why the apathy? Maybe because poetry book reviewing is stuck in an academic rut that induces alpha waves in the brain. The essay by Rigoberto Gonzales at Poetry Foundation website on poetry reviewing, an…
Who knew there was this much poetry news? And why doesn’t the San Francisco Chronicle carry it anymore? Thank heavens (Part 3,128) for the Internet, for providing po-bloggers to relieve my fingers from doing all that keyboard walking: Dumbfoundry (check the extensive links — divided by country and individual or group blogs)Books, Inq. – always readable, link-through-able, quippy, provocative In continuing computer-related issues, I’m on the trail of a setup to relieve symptoms of incipient…
No, not that backed-up. The digital variety, and now’s the time to do something you’ve always been meaning to do, if you haven’t already secured off-site backup:Cnet article – online backupsPC World article – old but still good Sheer visual-poetic-quirk-fest fun site — Robin Reagler’s:Big WindowMore bloghopping TK Visit https://racheldacus.net for more information and writing by Rachel Dacus.