Rachel Dacus's Blog, page 43

Writing into the Real

I'm in the midst of writing a play that makes use of fantasy and surrealism, and also in the middle of writing a novel that does the same. So I've been drawn to other writers who make use of these devices to write reality in a way that becomes more real than realistic straight narrative.

Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake uses a single fantastic device -- a psychic ability to feel in food the feelings of those who have had a hand in growing, cooking, and transporting it -- as a metaphor for the ways we touch each other inadvertently, clumsily, deeply, ineradicably with the atmospheres we carry and bestow. Bender packs rich, realistic detail into this tale of a lonely young girl and then come the psychic gifts which at first appear as a curse, all told in high metaphor and fabulous imagery. The book is like a movie made at Pixar, animated and intelligent, universal and not cloying.

I gravitate to reading and writing reality increasingly in metaphor and fantasy because it tells the truth better than facts. And nothing gives you more of a sense of your own reality than finding yourself in a character between the covers of a book. For one thing, it's an experience that lasts longer than the longest movie. And if you have a vivid imagination, the images are as memorable as any movie's -- more for those of us who are verbally oriented.

You can do a lot with fantasy in all media, poetry included. In my forthcoming poetry collection (can it really at last be coming out this fall? After having been "book left at the altar" by a publishing company that went out of business, I feel a sense of fantasy about Gods of Water and Air ever appearing! It has a strong element of fantasy, many poems that are surrealistic or what I think of as my own coined fairytales. I will keep reading and writing with an increasing element of fantasy tucked right into the midst of linear narrative. Like books that combine poems and prose (rare) I find it an immensely pleasing (new) genre of writing.

What shall we call it? Reality in Flight??

Gods of Water and Air has a cover!

Publisher Karen Kelsay Davies of Aldrich Press, which will bring out my new book of poems, prose, and drama, has unveiled the new cover. I'm very excited!



The goddess here portrayed is Nut, one of the most ancient Egyptian deities and somewhat mysterious. She's an unusual figure, in that most goddesses are portrayed as Earth, while the male gods are represented as Sky. Nut being Sky can span and protect the universe. She felt to me apt because it's a time for feminine energy to be freed and ascendant as never before. (With some current setbacks, of course.) Many of the poems in the book revolve around this new energy. Long may she reign -- and protect.

More information on when the book will be available is coming soon! In the meantime, if you want to be on a waiting list to be notified, send me your email address: rachel@dacushome.com.

To live is so startling

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.- Emily Dickinson

A sense of wonder is the open door to beauty, which can be found everywhere, even in the meanest circumstances. And for most people it's possible to seek circumstances that allow moments of wonder, even if temporarily and at some cost. Yet it's so human to close off to those possibilities and circle in the same daily ruts with closed senses that don't let beauty in. In the way sunlight is needed to wake up the brain every day, I think beauty is needed in small daily doses to awaken the heart.



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 memories 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.
- Rachel Dacus, from Gods of Water and Air, forthcoming from Aldrich Press

Time Travel Never Changes

Though some say time travel isn't what it used to be. In my novel-in-progress, there's a lot of debate about what it can and can't do. But one thing is certain: a jaunt back in time is unforgettable. That's what members of The Renaissance Club, my college instructor pilgrims to Italy, discover when their art historian tour guide turns out to have a golden pen containing a relic of Francis of Assisi that propels anyone who holds it into a meeting with remarkable figures from history. One of those remarkable meetings occurs in a cave outside of Assisi less than a week after the earthquakes.

Research for this book has taken me on some remarkable jaunts. The most recent was to learn more about about the earthquakes that hit Assisi in 1997, the year I've set my novel in. That year, Italy's spiritual heart received a number of shocks, spiritual, cultural, and geological. Some of the most important and sacred Western art was pulverized in two big quakes that hit the region. They say that Italy contains 60% of the world's art treasures, but Italy also sits on a network of dangerous faultlines.

Divine providence seemed to decree a blow that opened not only the frescoed ceiling vaults of the medieval church of San Francesco, where Saint Francis is buried, but also the hearts of thousands of people around the world. Over the next ten years helpers flocked to Assisi for the restoration of priceless art treasures.

News articles of the time detailed both the damage and the rescue efforts, while film footage captured the actual collapse of part of the church's ceiling roof. When that film was made, no one thought the Giotto and Cimabue frescoes would ever be replaced on the basilica ceiling. But only five years later, an unprecedented international art restoration project succeeded in replacing 50% of the frescoes on the ceiling "as they were" and the basilica was reopened.

Poem up at Stone Path Review

I'm delighted to have my poem "You Are So Tired" included in William Ricci's wonderful spring issue of The Stone Path Review. This one's for all of us who are running on Friday, month-end, or life-expanded overwhelm, for digging deeper to find the water for the long haul of a creative life. Stone Path has as its mission the pairing of visual and literary arts in "the paths we create and the media we use to express that path and the experience." Ricci publishes poems, poetry, prose, photographs, music, video, paintings, short stories – any artistic media. How about plays? A thought.

My Life on the Fringe

I had a wonderful gig, approaching poets, writers, and publishers to converse in print about their creative process and the literary landscape. For several years, I did interviews for the marvelous Fringe Magazine. And my blog this week, on the closing of the magazine, contains highlights (links) to some of the many interviews I was privileged to conduct. Enjoy! I sure did. Thank you, editor-in-chief Lizzie Stark and poetry editor Anna Lena Phillips, for including me in this wonderful literary adventure. I've learned so much and had a ball. Long live Fringe! The Archives will remain for your enjoyment and edification. I urge you to dig into their riches.

How Are We Doing?

At selling our books, that is? Anne R. Allen's blog claims we're probably doing it all wrong if we're working book sales through social media in the ways we've always been told to do it (for the last 18 months is now always in techno-world). I feel so relaxed after reading her list of all the things I don't have to do to promote my books. And the few things I do need to do, my occasional blogging being one.

It's been hard to blog after losing my beautiful dog Nissa month and a half ago. I lost interest in a lot of things for a few weeks, some interest is coming back. Oddly, my interest in getting things published vanished for awhile, but I was avid to write, I wrote my way through sorrow and out the other side. I wrote new things and revised old ones. I journaled and did stream-of-consciousness writing. Wrote poems and plays and worked on my novel, and even song lyrics. Writing saves me over and over again. But I miss her still, very much.

Shoot Those Poems Into Space! and Write a 100-Word Story

If you've been behind as I have in sending your work out for publication, Diane Lockward's delightful and useful blog Blogalicious has lists (with links) to literary journals that read in summer. Thanks, Diane! I may actually catch up.

Except of course for the revising part. I will never catch up with that.

Prose poem or flash fiction? The line is fine, maybe there isn't one. On The Book Baby Blog they refer to it as "the art of compression and surprise." I think that describes a good poem, but maybe to you it's a good story. Yes to both. Whatever it is, I'm going to be practicing more of it. I love prose poems when they compress language and have the chewy sounds and vibrant images I expect from poetry. And when they compress a story and have an actual plot. Can you write one in 100 words? Tight fit. 100 Word Story challenges you to try and submit. I just may.

Mixed Bag Book

My new book, Gods of Water and Air (forthcoming from Kelsay Books), is a mixed bag of poetry, prose, drama, and flash fiction. I like books that incorporate different genres, like letters and narrative, poetry and essays. Japanese haiku poet Basho's books The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Records of a Travel-Worn Skeleton intrigued me with the readability of a story told through different media all between two covers.

Mixing up genres of writing is supported by an increasing number of journals. I think of TheNewerYork, that states "There are literary gems everywhere, from the disclaimer on a box of crackers to the instructions on your algebra test." I also think of Danse Macabre, a magazine with a soundtrack that defies description and also includes different languages, providing a quirky and fascinating journey in every issue. They invite submissions of conventional forms, but a wide variety of them, and leave room for some invented forms. It will be interesting to me to see how readers react to finding a one-act play in the middle of my poetry collection. And to experiment with publishing pieces in some of these less-conventional formats.

Start Anywhere

This is one of the best self-critique exercises I've ever read, no matter what form you're writing in, from Bill Roorbach's wonderful blog, Bad Advice Wednesday:
"Here’s a test exercise to invoke as you’re writing a book or story, a play or essay, really anything: flip to any page thereof and declare any paragraph or scene you find there the first paragraph or scene of the work in hand.  And read as if it were.  Read it aloud.  Does it rise to the occasion?  It should.  Does it inspire a new way of thinking about your material or story?  It might.  Does it seem to cast a different character or idea or storyline in a newly leading role? 

I'll be following this blog! I'm done (I think) with my novel about travelers in Northern Italy, but of course the editing is never over until they grab the file out of your hands forcibly. Happy writing!