Rachel Dacus's Blog, page 55
April 10, 2011
Kim Addonizio reading in Walnut Creek + How A Poem Happens
One of my favorite poets, and my teacher, Kim Addonizio, is reading at the Walnut Creek Library on Tuesday night. Here's the Contra Costa Times announcement. Should be a great evening. Music too!
Brian Brodeur's blog How a Poem Happens is great reading if you want the behind-the-scenes story of notable poems. This week's interviewee is Gray Jacobik, with Brian asking questions about revision, the trigger for writing, what part inspiration plays, and all those wonderful things we talk about endlessly when poets get together.
Happy April poem-writing! (Or revising.)
Brian Brodeur's blog How a Poem Happens is great reading if you want the behind-the-scenes story of notable poems. This week's interviewee is Gray Jacobik, with Brian asking questions about revision, the trigger for writing, what part inspiration plays, and all those wonderful things we talk about endlessly when poets get together.
Happy April poem-writing! (Or revising.)
April 9, 2011
Big Poetry Book Giveaway Continues
You can enter here, to win either my book or Dorianne Laux's, or go to Kelli Russell Agodon's site for links to lots of poets giving away one copy of their book + one copy of another poetry book at the end of April. To enter, just leave your name and email!
Hope April Poetry Month finds you drafting, revising, reading, and networking with other poets! I'm going to an online workshop this afternoon.
Hope April Poetry Month finds you drafting, revising, reading, and networking with other poets! I'm going to an online workshop this afternoon.
April 7, 2011
Big Poetry Book Giveaway a Hit!
Kelli Russell Agodon's brainstorm of the Big Poetry Book Giveaway appears to be taking hold, with lots of poets hosting a giveaway on their sites, and of course I'm giving away two books to the winner of a drawing here. You can find lots of links on Kelli's site, and there's still time in April to launch your own!
My friend David Israel has a charming verse up on his blog this morning. Maybe you can use a line from it as a prompt for today.
My friend David Israel has a charming verse up on his blog this morning. Maybe you can use a line from it as a prompt for today.
April 6, 2011
Poetry prompts for today + E.E. cummings
The Writing Site has a good list of poetry-writing prompts for children at different grade levels. If you're teaching this April and want to include a section on poetry, this article might be useful. I'm all for kids getting into poetry early. I did, with Dylan Thomas, the Japanese haiku poets, and even Wallace Stevens (couldn't make head or tail out of the poems but I loved the sounds the words made and some of the stranger words).
Speaking of early impressions, this E.E. Cummings poem
made its mark on me when I was an early teen. The fresh use of words and syntax opened my eyes to new possibilities.
The photo exercise is another prompt. Select a photo and write a poem from it. I wrote one, am going to try another this week.
Speaking of early impressions, this E.E. Cummings poem
made its mark on me when I was an early teen. The fresh use of words and syntax opened my eyes to new possibilities.
The photo exercise is another prompt. Select a photo and write a poem from it. I wrote one, am going to try another this week.
April 5, 2011
The Alchemist's Kitchen
I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing Susan Rich's fine poetry collection, The Alchemist's Kitchen. My review is up in the current issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review. This is a delicious book (kitchen pun intended), brewing up travel, transformation, and mind-watering meditations on a range of subjects. Hope you like the review -- better yet, get the book.
April 4, 2011
Memoirs of a Rocket Kid & Fathers
Thinking about my father today, so I thought I'd post an excerpt from my memoir Rocket Lessons about growing up as a Rocket Kid.
Like the men who built the railroads, Dad was an adventurer. In space, what mattered was audacity, not polish. Manners were not part of the calculation set. But my father was not even as calm as other rocket engineers. He was blessed with a thundering voice and a quirky nervous system that did not permit him to sit down for more than half an hour, unless he was too depressed to get out of bed. His Depression-era childhood made him imagine he fit into working class San Pedro. He saw himself as similar to the Europeans who had come here in the 1900s to create what you could call a fish rush. But Dad was nothing like the slow-moving Slavs and Italians. Dad's voice preceded him by two rooms' length and he never stopped talking. He prided himself on being in the elite vanguard. He had received his top secret clearance, shaken Louis Dunn's hand and met Werner von Braun. The Russians were launching missiles that could put nuclear bombs in our back yards, and that gave everyone at STL a permanent headache. No wonder Dad's twitch was getting worse.
We had no idea how high the stakes were. No one yet envisioned men on the moon and satellite-deflected communication. We used rotary dial phones with cords. If you had to call France, you sent a telegram. There were three channels on our black and white television, and none came from farther than the transmission towers in Baldwin Hills. All we knew was that Dad was strung tighter than piano wire. When he came home from Florida he reverberated like the top-hat in a drum set.
"Dolph's got my ass in a sling. Ga-dam bean counters wouldn't reimburse me for the raincoat I lost. Next expense report, I'll say, okay, you sons-a-bitches, go ahead and cross off the raincoat – if you can find it. It's in there. Only it ain't called 'raincoat.' Geezacrist, if we don't get this payload into orbit, I can move to Rosarita Beach and fish all day."
He jumped up and wandered around the living room, inspecting the furniture as if to find fault. My mother smoothed her apron and rubbed her lips together to spread lipstick the way she did when guests arrived, but she did not have lipstick on. Dad repeated gleefully, "Move to Rosarita! Fish all day!"
She emptied the ashtray into the bowl of discarded peanut shells and took it to the kitchen, looking like she wanted to go on out the back door and never return. But she did come back to put the ashtray on the table. Her eyes seemed to have lost color. Dad's job was taking a toll on all of us. A different father came home from every trip. His gaze seemed more pointed, his hair shorter and twitch worse, his searchlight of criticism sweeping the room.
"Let's see that report card," he demanded of me one night. The martini glass was empty. We heard the clang of pot lids, Mom at the frenetic stage of making dinner. I ran to my room, got it and proudly handed it over. He scrutinized my straight A's. Raising his chin, he peered down at me as if he expected one of the A's to wiggle around and become an F.
"Aha, aha … okay. Okay, good." He gave me a look. "Now don't rest on your laurels."
I was in second grade. I just stared.
After the next launch, his face was the color of his cigarette ash. Settled on the couch, he slurped his drink in silence, spitting olive pits into the dish and often missing.
#
Here's a great poem about a father by Theodore Roethke:
MY PAPA'S WALTZ
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Like the men who built the railroads, Dad was an adventurer. In space, what mattered was audacity, not polish. Manners were not part of the calculation set. But my father was not even as calm as other rocket engineers. He was blessed with a thundering voice and a quirky nervous system that did not permit him to sit down for more than half an hour, unless he was too depressed to get out of bed. His Depression-era childhood made him imagine he fit into working class San Pedro. He saw himself as similar to the Europeans who had come here in the 1900s to create what you could call a fish rush. But Dad was nothing like the slow-moving Slavs and Italians. Dad's voice preceded him by two rooms' length and he never stopped talking. He prided himself on being in the elite vanguard. He had received his top secret clearance, shaken Louis Dunn's hand and met Werner von Braun. The Russians were launching missiles that could put nuclear bombs in our back yards, and that gave everyone at STL a permanent headache. No wonder Dad's twitch was getting worse.
We had no idea how high the stakes were. No one yet envisioned men on the moon and satellite-deflected communication. We used rotary dial phones with cords. If you had to call France, you sent a telegram. There were three channels on our black and white television, and none came from farther than the transmission towers in Baldwin Hills. All we knew was that Dad was strung tighter than piano wire. When he came home from Florida he reverberated like the top-hat in a drum set.
"Dolph's got my ass in a sling. Ga-dam bean counters wouldn't reimburse me for the raincoat I lost. Next expense report, I'll say, okay, you sons-a-bitches, go ahead and cross off the raincoat – if you can find it. It's in there. Only it ain't called 'raincoat.' Geezacrist, if we don't get this payload into orbit, I can move to Rosarita Beach and fish all day."
He jumped up and wandered around the living room, inspecting the furniture as if to find fault. My mother smoothed her apron and rubbed her lips together to spread lipstick the way she did when guests arrived, but she did not have lipstick on. Dad repeated gleefully, "Move to Rosarita! Fish all day!"
She emptied the ashtray into the bowl of discarded peanut shells and took it to the kitchen, looking like she wanted to go on out the back door and never return. But she did come back to put the ashtray on the table. Her eyes seemed to have lost color. Dad's job was taking a toll on all of us. A different father came home from every trip. His gaze seemed more pointed, his hair shorter and twitch worse, his searchlight of criticism sweeping the room.
"Let's see that report card," he demanded of me one night. The martini glass was empty. We heard the clang of pot lids, Mom at the frenetic stage of making dinner. I ran to my room, got it and proudly handed it over. He scrutinized my straight A's. Raising his chin, he peered down at me as if he expected one of the A's to wiggle around and become an F.
"Aha, aha … okay. Okay, good." He gave me a look. "Now don't rest on your laurels."
I was in second grade. I just stared.
After the next launch, his face was the color of his cigarette ash. Settled on the couch, he slurped his drink in silence, spitting olive pits into the dish and often missing.
#
Here's a great poem about a father by Theodore Roethke:
MY PAPA'S WALTZ
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
April 3, 2011
Big Poetry Book Giveaway
I'm participating in the wonderful Poetry Month event Kelli Russell Agodon is organizing, the Big Poetry Book Giveaway. I'm offering my own book, Femme au chapeau, and also Dorianne Laux's What We Carry, a book I think essential to any poetry library.To enter my giveaway, leave a comment here and be sure to include your email address. I'll print out your names and fish the two winners out of a bowl on May 1, then let you know who the winners are and ship the books!
If you want to participate with your own giveaway blog, check out Kelli's page.
Details, details
Ted Kooser in Poetry Home Repair Manual on the value of details in a poem:
It's the details that make experiences unique and compelling. It s watching one particular old woman in a cardigan sweater burn wallpaper in a barrel, pushing it down and down with a crowbar.
Finely detailed writing won't make it a poem, but it will bring the reader into the scene, whatever scene you're setting, so that you can perform whatever magic poetry can effect within the scene.
It's the details that make experiences unique and compelling. It s watching one particular old woman in a cardigan sweater burn wallpaper in a barrel, pushing it down and down with a crowbar.
Finely detailed writing won't make it a poem, but it will bring the reader into the scene, whatever scene you're setting, so that you can perform whatever magic poetry can effect within the scene.
April 2, 2011
First drafts are not yet poems
I was stunned to look at Elizabeth Bishop's early draft of her famous villanelle, "One Art." It was such a shapeless mess that had I penned it, I would have thrown it away not long afterward as being hopeless. Yet Bishop was one of the most dogged revisers the art of poetry has ever known. She claimed to have taken 20 years to revise "The Moose." This article gives a peek at her 17 extant drafts of "One Art."
April 1, 2011
April - National Poetry Month in the U.S.
It's become a tradition to join the April Poetry Month Poem-A-Day challenge. I've done it for several years. This year, I plan to revise a poem a day. The last thing I need is more unfinished drafts. If you want to generate new work, here are a few sites offering ways to celebrate:Poets.org - 30 Ways to Celebrate
For Teachers
The Official NaPoWriMo site -- the biggest and most comprehensive, listing 280 related sites
Poetic Asides hosting NaPoWriMo
The Gazebo at the Alsop Review - hosting NaPoWriMo
I plan to blog every day a little something to help -- a prompt, a site, a thought. Happy writing and reading! (Don't forget the reading.)
