Rachel Dacus's Blog, page 42

Growing up with the gods of water and air

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 diversity fascinated me in classroom, park, neighborhood, ballet studio, and beach. While this country still struggles with the practice of equality, I feel it in my bones and heritage. How we were one in the dark on the beach for the midnight grunion run. How Slavs from different towns firebombed each other's union halls over centuryies-old grudges. How differences can be nothing, depending on your vision and the amount of light. And there's always a lot of light at the edge of the ocean.   

Gods of Water and Air is going to press!

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.

Excerpt from Gods of Water and Air - for Sara R.

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 behind my eye, that deep shadethe sun can never erase.
No one asks, but they whisper
of my wartime because of my ageand German accent: was it a campor an attic? Even my children don’t askabout my teenage of fire and defiance. I hope they never have to knowhow to sleep on the pine dirt or stretch a soup with weedswhile hiding in the trees’ dank wells.
But then they made a movie about Jewish freedom fighters.I had to speak. I showed the clippings to my neighbor. Nice girl.I didn’t even know she was Jewish.I told her they took me to the premiere because of what I didwith the matches, how they wouldn’t light
the fuses on the tracks. Run! Run!Rain damped their words and the wet matchesshook in my hands, but I stayed. At thirteen.
I’m proud of festooning the woods with roses of fire and flesh.To have lit the chaos candles. Even if they took me too. Not so muchto live for: twilight-to-dawn hunger,hugging the dark for a pillow. Chewing on the word Jew and how it now meant animal.
Why should I have cared if the explosion ripped me into strips and mingled them with Nazi shreds?I had to grow up fast, to resist the commander’s hand on my breast. Was that why they left me
feverish on the ground? Or just that they had to move fast.
A miracle, I did not die.
Now a grandmother, I’m still strong as a rose singing into the California sun.When we hug, we light up
like the angel’s candlestickof dynamite that flaresand fights the dark.

for Sara Rosnow

How to Prepare for a Poetry Book Launch

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.

5. Consider a pre-order discount if book purchased directly (inscribed) from you. Think about where you would post notice of this. Take a nap.

6. Look at Vista Print to order bookmarks. Find no bookmarks. Take a nap.

7. Having set up an author page, consider things to post on it about your forthcoming book. Decide that this blog will be it.

8. Look at your mailing list and work on a note to friends and fans.

9. Look at book trailers. Take another nap.

10. Wake up to find it's another day closer to launch. Read list above. Go back to bed.

11. Oh, yes -- and a party! Time for a nap.

Introducing Terry!

There are no words, for once. Just joy. Welcoming Elfinsilk's Teresa "Terry" to our home yesterday. She is a poem. I can't write a thing other than Happy, Happy, Happy. And keep my camera close.

Sometimes poetry is completely wordless.

Kisses

A poem from my new book in honor of my late darling dog Nissa. I just heard that my new puppy is ready to come home!


Kisses
Nissa speaks in kisses.A dog’s mouth isn’t made for English, so she sounds her vowels with swipes of tongue – that best pink instrument. She covers the face, the lips from which my voice emergesand patiently investigatesthe curves, tasting the salt of meaning behind my ear, pressing on the placethat looses my giggles,which I am sure she knowsas her real name.

This Poetry Thing and That

Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will be the subject in another of the wonderful Tiferet Talks -- Melissa Studdard's streaming radio interview show sponsored by Tiferet Journal. Listen to the show streaming on Wednesday, September 4 at 6:30 PM CST, or listen later, when the show is archived. I love Pinsky's poetry and also his book on poetics. His reading of "The Shirt" is one of my all-time favorite readings. And here's my reading of a poem "Every Morning I Try" from my forthcoming (September!) book, Gods of Water and Air.  It appears at The Cortland Review.

Pre-Launch Dawn - Gods of Water and Air

It's the hour before the launch of my book, and like the men in the blockhouse where my father worked to send up missiles that streaked through the sky, I'm working quietly (thought without slide rule) to tell my friends and fans that this book will soon lift off from Aldrich Press -- 133 pages of poems, essays, and even a short play. Here's a taste, a prose poem from the first section, Gods of Upheaval and Flight.
 
Wild Ranunculas 

This is how you mend, ounce by floating ounce. Each petal lights on the eye, and the five-fingered yellow flowers nod. A moving cloud scars the field in March wind’s bitter tea. Walking through fields is an undoing. Eyes take off memo- ries and stand where sun has fallen and sprouted into a thousand green buds. Within each opened cup, a tiny black and drunken fly. How have you come this far, you ask. To know the wild ranunculas graze on your trampling ankles. Go back! You tell the flowers. The world is not ready for your news of stars. The meadow’s ancient bulletins are thick with unearned light. You return bee-like, carrying.

The Crafty Poet is published!

Diane Lockward has published a poetic craft book, The Crafty Poet, that is as delicious and fun as her blog and newsletter. A busy poet, she has published three full-length collections and two chapbooks, publishes a poetry newsletter and been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Writer's Almanac. And of course I'm proud of the book -- I have a poem in her section on responses to prompts! One of 27 poems as examples. The prompts are wonderful. If you're a prompt-inspired poet, you will want a copy of this lovely book.

The Crafty Poet is pubilshed!

Diane Lockward has published a poetic craft book, The Crafty Poet, that is as delicious and fun as her blog and newsletter. A busy poet, she has published three full-length collections and two chapbooks, publishes a poetry newsletter and been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Writer's Almanac. And of course I'm proud of the book -- I have a poem in her section on responses to prompts! One of 27 poems as examples. The prompts are wonderful. If you're a prompt-inspired poet, you will want a copy of this lovely book.