Rachel Dacus's Blog, page 37

Midsummer Metaphors - Discount on Gods of Water and Air!

If you haven't got a copy of my new book, out last fall from Aldrich Press, I'm offering a hefty discount on Gods of Water and Air to celebrate midsummer. Madness indeed, but it's not about money, it's about poetry. This collection has prose as well -- even a small play. Email me (rachel@dacushome.com) to order one direct from me, for only $11.00 (135 pages -- a deal!). Here's a taste -- animated and read by the fabulous Nic Sebastian:

Chopin Reigns at Poetry Storehouse

Happy Midsummer!

The House of Emily D

Last night I saw the best play about Emily Dickinson I could imagine. It was a musical, and it was performed by fifth grade actors who brought this luminous ecstatic poet ("the Myth" as she was sometimes called) to life. It also brought to vivid life her bustling, growing Amherst ("the only thing silent in Amherst is the 'h'"). Written by my brilliant playwright friend Judith Nielsen, music composed by a young and talented composer, Laura Reed, "The House of Emily D" is, fittingly, a play in verse.

It made me remember how much I love the surprising and mystical figures in ED's verse. The play well portrayed her outwardly quiet and inwardly exciting life, the way she engaged with children as she couldn't always with adults. Made me want to write more poems springing from her verses, like this from my book Gods of Water and Air.
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Children, maids,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;">and innocents pounced on</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;">the green, glinting stones you strewed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;">in your wake. Unlike the Babylon lady, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;">you didn’t need props </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;">to hold up your crown.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;">You only needed to lighten it </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;">by sewing into packets your wit </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;">on death, your living gems.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M5VZ-gqe33k..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M5VZ-gqe33k..." height="200" width="130" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB;"><i>Special offer: Midsummer Metaphors ~ until June 30, 2014, you can buy an autographed copy of Gods of Water and Air directly from me for only $11.00! Email me if you want one: rachel@dacushome.com. </i> </span></div>

Stalking a 17th Century Genius

Gianlorenzo Bernini Sculpting in ClayI'm writing a story about a 17th century artist and a 21st century art historian meeting, and the big question is, what does he have to say to her, and what does she have to say to him? My main character has done her Master's thesis on the sculptor/architect and meets him in person in St. Peter's basilica, thanks to a magic time-shifting gold pen. Is she kind of his time-stalker? Can she reveal to him things about his future, and what will that do to him and his art?

I'm having fun pondering time travel dilemmas, not to mention how to craft a romantic relationship between a man who's a pre-eminent male chauvinist and a career-oriented contemporary young woman. Big questions arise, but the ones that engage me are about time and history and whether or not history is truly fixed.

I'd love to hear thoughts about these issues, and also suggestions of well-written time-travel books that engage these questions. Ideas?

This photos shows Bernini's rare clay models for his magnificent marble sculptures. They're on view in the Franchetti Collection in the Ca d'Oro in Venice. The Metropolitan Museum in New York published a book, Bernini Sculpting in Clay , which had this to say about the bozzetti, or clay models:

"The brilliantly expressive clay models created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) as "sketches" for his masterful works in marble and bronze offer extraordinary insights into his creative imagination. Marked with impressions from the artist's fingers and tools, these models give the viewer a sense of looking over Bernini's shoulder as the sculptures were taking shape. Most the models—especially his sketches, or bozzetti—are executed in a loose style that conveys great speed and dexterity, as well as the artist's concern with developing the best possible design."

A Time Travel Romance

I like that term better than "paranormal romance," which sounds like it should involve bending spoons, which is only slightly weirder-sounding than the term I ran across in Wikipedia searches of literary genres: "monster erotica." Alrighty then.

It's true that I am writing a time travel romance involving the great Baroque sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini (great is the adjective he insists on accompanying his name, like some people insist on their middle names). It's set in contemporary AND 17th century Rome, Assisi, Siena, Florence, and Venice and was liberally researched in an intensive art history tour of those cities I took awhile back. Plus many hours/months/years of fascinating research reading. I can't seem to stop reading about Italy. And I get to make an excuse for doing it by needing to know exactly what kind of wine glass my heroine might have sipped wine from in a tavern in 17th cent. Assisi while having a chance time-encounter with the great artist.

So how did this Rocket Kid start writing about time travel? My father was friends with Isaac Asimov in Philadelphia in the 1940s when they were both rocket engineers and neither one wrote science fiction. That's how I grew up: in a rocket scientist household liberally stocked with science fiction, especially Asimov's. And Fred Hoyle's The Black Hole. I developed an early interest in such things as time travel, black holes, and alternate universes. But what did I want to read? I wanted to read about girls, of course. Girls in Oz, girls solving mysteries, and girls in Gone With the Wind. It only took me a few decades to figure out about putting the two together. Fantasy/SF + girls = paranormal romance.

Who knew that the Twilight series would catapult this seemingly oddball genre to prominence. Actually, I didn't know until the other day, when I researched literary genres to see how my novel fits. I haven't read Twilight and think the vampire craze is silly. But time travel -- I think it's possible. If only in some of the most entertaining fiction I've read. (The Time Traveller's Wife, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life After Life, and of course Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.) My favorite time travel device: a genetic disorder. Second favorite: a golden pen.

Memorial Day - Whitman Witnesses

Memorial Day began as a way to honor soldiers who died in the Civil War. Coincidentally, Walt Whitman's birthday was a few days ago. One year, I wrote him a birthday poem, after having seen a play about him. The play movingly used his own lines to express his witnessing and nursing of the suffering soldiers. Today I'm grateful for Whitman's moving tributes to the hundreds of thousands who made their sacrifice in our Civil War to secure equality. Happy birthday, Walt Whitman.

Happy Birthday, My CaptainMay 21
Poet, light a candle on a small cakefor Uncle Walt, standing on the road, hatless, bowing to the President this dark night.Every night our uncle bowsto the haunted man who rides to his hilltop cottage alone, past assassins, and past an old poet,carrying grief under his tall black hat. Watch him, your great
Uncle, reading letters to soldiers falling into their lilac sleep. How he goes home to write in loping lines and to rove the globe in dreams, blending East and West as America’s brothers lie in ditches bleeding.
See him also as Jimi Hendrix,mouthing the guitar strings, rag tied around his head a wounded soldier, wrestling a lyric with a shredded flag. Hear Uncle Walt in every beat of drums, in dreams of peace dying away as still soldiers die, and lilacs bloom in more guitars.
This May day we give you a hat-raise, Uncle Walt, our everypoet.We wish you rockets breaking into flowers, singing that weaves into war’s clattering omnibus wheels to halt them. From the shores of the great Myself, we waveto you. Be rocked and roll all day in your song’s long halleloo.
-- from Gods of Water and Air (Available at Amazon)

Poetry Book Giveaway and Midsummer Metaphors

Thanks to all who participated in my Great Poetry Book Giveaway this year! I picked names out of the numerical hat and sent a copy of my Gods of Water and Air   to one winner and Stanley Kunitz's book Passing Through . I noticed we all entered each other's Poetry Book Giveaways. It was a pleasure to read blogs I hadn't visited and learn about books I will now buy. In the giving spirit, I'm offering a discount on Gods of Water and Air during June: just $11 -- or 18% off the Amazon list price, if you purchase directly from me. Email me at rachel@dacushome.com and we'll make arrangements.

Here's a poem from the book. It's about Emily Dickinson:



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Clock a Clay

English poet John Clare epitomizes for me something I'm often reaching for in my writing and occasionally dazzling into, in still and open moments. This poem, featured on Poetry Daily, amazes me, first into silence and then into writing.

The meaning of "clock a clay," as poet Susan Stewart tells us (she selected the poem for PD) comes from a rural Northhamptonshire belief. The idea is that you can tell time by counting the number of taps on the ground it takes to make a ladybug fly away. So the poem is in the voice of the ladybug, a vantage point I have visited on a summer day. I hope it amazes you into a summer's day of writing.

Clock A Clayby John Clare (1793-1864)
                        1
In the cowslips peeps I lye
Hidden from the buzzing fly
While green grass beneath me lies
Pearled wi’ dew like fishes eyes
Here I lye a Clock a clay
Waiting for the time o’day

                        2
While grassy forests quake surprise
And the wild wind sobs and sighs
My gold home rocks as like to fall
On its pillars green and tall
When the pattering rain drives bye
Clock a Clay keeps warm and dry

                        3
Day by day and night by night
All the week I hide from sight
In the cowslips peeps I lye
In rain and dew still warm and dry
Day and night and night and day
Red black spotted clock a clay

                        4
My home it shakes in wind and showers
Pale green pillar top’t wi’ flowers
Bending at the wild wind’s breath
Till I touch the grass beneath
Here still I live lone clock a clay
Watching for the time of day

Afternoon with Monet

Lovely day here, the breezy and brilliant kind of spring day I imagined from Monet's painting, after which I wrote my poem. The traveling exhibition "Monet in Norman" visited the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco some years ago and it inspired me to write back to several of the paintings. Bought the book too, so I can keep talking back to Monet -- or rather, asking questions, as in this poem. Do you ever talk back to poems with your own poems?


I Spend an Afternoon with Monet
The poet interrupts the painter.It looks like a poem made of a thousand commas!I didn’t mean to be abrupt. He tips backhis hat to raise the black commas of his eyebrows.I can’t help myself; I ask When did the mists veil youand make you this burly old bride?
He pretends not to hear, flips offanother series of commas. The strokes daisy in rowsof white, maybe foam, maybe snowflakes.The skritch of his brush repeats itselffifty times as I wait. Everyone assumes white is his finishing touch, but I see he begins with airy patches,flecking light into bush, sky, and oceanas if seeing through lace. Is it his eyesight?
He begins with light, then adds darkemphasis. Light on light, the wholeof sky and sea in rhythm, as though harmonywere endemic as minnows or weeds.I stand back all afternoon and watchas he accrues, like a greedy accountant, like God,flakes, flocks, fleets, puffs, petals, and leaves.

Confession Time

Writing a Poem with Monet
It’s April and I’m growing green, but bills cover my desk.The money in my check book dazzleslike the mineral caves carved by the surf at Pourville, where Monet stood at his easel to paint thundering waves.
I sign my check in the lower right as artists will, re-total the balance and turn up a new one. Diamonds a mile down in Monet’s sea crack, chip, and erode. A crash.The hissing wave spreads geodes on the sand.I cross-hatch a sketch on the “payee” line.
Monet painted in a hurry. Maybe I should writemyself broke quicker. I scrawl a verse on “amount.” On “date” I riddle time. Another smash. More gems float away, twinkling,
and my ledger’s full of emptiness, dark water tipped by snowy zeros. A few more lines and I’m emptied out, thinking of Monet
as I lick stamps, close envelopes, and face the slack tide. Here’s a new swell and surge. There’s the pen, glowing in shifting, pastel light.
~ from Gods of Water and Air (Aldrich Press, 2013)

Guest Blog: Erica Goss on Activating Your Core Strength as a Writer

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, we stare until our eyes glaze over, devoid of ideas. Writer’s block is like insomnia, a soul-robbing period where our brains refuse to do what we want them to. No more frustrating situation exists for writers.
If we’re smart, we’ll get up and move around. Exercise is good for the body and the brain, and movement gets us out of a rut faster than sitting at our desks. Every so often, we need to shake up our routines.
My book Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets has a wealth of ideas designed to help writers get over writer’s block. I’d like to share the chapter titled “Core Strengths” with you. This chapter deals with exercise, both literary and physical, as a technique useful for writers.
CORE STRENGTHS
If you are familiar with the CrossFit exercise program, you know that it promotes a group of intense, varied workouts. These include the WOD (Workout of the Day), which is never the same set of movements two days in a row. The CrossFit faithful are convinced that the intensity and the variety of the exercises give them a superior workout.
What do a bunch of sweaty people yelling “arrrrgghhhh!” and throwing twenty-pound medicine balls around have to do with poetry? Well, plenty. If you ever embarked on an exercise program only to find that it became less and less effective, you understand the need to mix up your workout, whether it’s physical or literary. Varying your writing routine can lead to new insights, a more confident tone, and can break you out of the creative doldrums.
Here are some suggestions to help you develop your core strength as a writer:
Change your writing routine. For example, you might be convinced you write better in the wee hours of the morning, or in the afternoon, or at midnight. Try writing at the time of day when you normally feel less effective.
Practice writing in short, timed bursts. Set a time limit – say five minutes – and write. Then decrease the time by a minute until you’re down to one minute. Then decrease it to thirty seconds. Learning to write this way can be very helpful when you get a sudden inspiration but you’re not at your desk.
Change your location. I don’t mean swap your nice comfy desk for the local café – that’s too easy. Remember, we’re using CrossFit for a model here! Take your notebook to a place you have never written before: the edge of the ocean, an animal shelter, the freeway overpass, a construction site, a karate studio, an appliance store, a gas station, a preschool, a pharmacy. Practice those short, timed bursts. Don’t worry if you attract attention.
Vary your reading diet. Always stick to free verse of a certain period? Try some of the New Formalists. Tend to read mostly people of the same gender and ethnic group as yourself? Well, there’s really no excuse for that – but sometimes it takes an effort to seek out what’s different. Read more challenging work, and don’t give up right away.
Write a bunch of poems with titles like “Squat,” “Deadlift,” “Dips,” “Rope Climb,” “Pull-ups,” and “Holds.” Make them muscular. Make them sweat. Then do it again.
Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets is available from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Vibrant-Words-Ideas-Inspirations-Poets/dp/0989667634/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396885012&sr=8-1&keywords=vibrant+words
Erica Goss is the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA, and the host of Word to Word, a show about poetry. She is the author of Wild Place (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). Her poems, reviews and articles appear widely, both on-line and in print. She won the 2011 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Contest and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2010 and 2013. Please visit her at: www.ericagoss.com.