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!

Juggling with the Muse

Have you ever seen two jugglers work at keeping the same six or eight balls in the air together? They face each other, but they never look at one another, only at the balls in the air (that's the whole trick of juggling, keep your eye on the ball). I juggle with the Muse some days, most days. Ideas are the balls in the air, my stock in trade both as a grant writer and a creative writer, so it's like being in the midst of a hive of bees a lot of the time. But that's another metaphor. I keep the many balls of idea aloft by being willing to be distracted from one by another, and also having great ways to quickly record them and remember where I put them. Enter the Smartphone -- in my case, an iPhone with dictation. A few words into my phone become a note becomes an email to myself, and I don't even have to slow my walking pace. More ideas that were central to some project came through this way!

What's your favorite device to catch the flying ideas on the wing?

Gods of Water and Air Coming Out Soon!

My new poetry collection, Gods of Water and Air, will be released by Kelsay Books in the fall of this year. A mix of poems, prose poems, essays, and even a short play, it will be an homage to the forces that grew me and sustain me: the ocean's edge, the people shaped by this landscape, our history, and above all love's failures and victories. Death's failure to erase it. It is really a book of odes  to these daily gods. Thank you, Karen Kelsay, for selecting it and giving me such scope to finish it! Here's a sample:

O Beautiful

As we pull up and park at Point Reyes,

            a woman lowers

            her binoculars,

                                    and points: Eagle! 

            We raise our glasses and scan

the hills, see a white-headed fledgling

                        standing on a ridge, outstretched

                                    wings sieving the wind.

            His pharaonic beaked head

                        turns slowly. Through trembling

                                    lenses, we watch the Golden

                        Quarter come alive--

                                    O, beautiful

                       

                        Descending to the estuary,

we leave behind his practice flights,

            as he hoists up, free-falls and strikes.

                        His freedom is law-forged.

                                    He’s a leashed kite

            tethered to this range

                        where a few more eagles

                                    nest each year, their circles

            pruning shore and sky.

                                   

                        At the Lindsay Wildlife Hospital,

            a tethered eagle hops atop a cage.

His broken wing created a captivity

                        where he’ll live longer

                                    than his cliff-roaming

            cousins. He flaps

                        in tight

                                    circles,

snapping

his wings’ dark flags.

                        We stand back,

                                    doubting the chain

                        as he puzzles us

                                    with a hard black eye.

originally published in Terrain

Mining the Orr

Every once in awhile (more often if you're a diligent reader) you dig into a body of poetry you've always known was there, but not really looked at. You had no idea it held such riches. As I awoke today with a heavy sense of loss because of my dog's death, I saw an article about poet Gregory Orr, read some poems, and remembered why I urgently need to get one of his books. If only because he said this about poetry, which I am experiencing now:

“Poetry is the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of despair and into the light.”—Gregory Orr

Like James Wright, whose imagery evokes for me a mysterious divine presence, the few poems of Orr's I've been reading speak directly to my experience that everything holds a life force that can be felt and absorbed as beautiful and radiant. Even death and loss can.

This is what they say on all the articles about Gregory Orr (his publicist must have written it, it's much quoted): "Considered by many to be a master of short, lyric free verse ..." This one to me is about as short and masterful and wonderful as you can get.

Hold off, rain.
Of course, my garden
Craves water.
But the peonies
Are in full blossom.
If you fall now,
Their petals will
All be scattered.

Wait a day.
Let them feel
The pure joy
Of opening.

Fall tomorrow,
Then you can show
Them love
Is also a shattering.

Untitled [I know now the beloved]

  by Gregory Orr

I know now the beloved
Has no fixed abode,
That each body 
She inhabits
Is only a temporary
Home.
             That she
Casts off forms
As eagerly
As lovers shed clothes.

I accept that he's
Just passing through
That flower
Or that stone.

And yet, it makes 
Me dizzy—
The way he hides
In the flow of it,
The way she shifts
In fluid motions,
Becoming other things.

I want to stop him— 
If only briefly.
I want to lure her
To the surface
And catch her
In this net of words.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23050#sthash.M2uRCUpB.dpuf

Untitled [I know now the beloved]

  by Gregory Orr

I know now the beloved
Has no fixed abode,
That each body 
She inhabits
Is only a temporary
Home.
             That she
Casts off forms
As eagerly
As lovers shed clothes.

I accept that he's
Just passing through
That flower
Or that stone.

And yet, it makes 
Me dizzy—
The way he hides
In the flow of it,
The way she shifts
In fluid motions,
Becoming other things.

I want to stop him— 
If only briefly.
I want to lure her
To the surface
And catch her
In this net of words.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23050#sthash.M2uRCUpB.dpuf

Untitled [I know now the beloved]

  by Gregory Orr

I know now the beloved
Has no fixed abode,
That each body 
She inhabits
Is only a temporary
Home.
             That she
Casts off forms
As eagerly
As lovers shed clothes.

I accept that he's
Just passing through
That flower
Or that stone.

And yet, it makes 
Me dizzy—
The way he hides
In the flow of it,
The way she shifts
In fluid motions,
Becoming other things.

I want to stop him— 
If only briefly.
I want to lure her
To the surface
And catch her
In this net of words.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23050#sthash.M2uRCUpB.dpuf

Untitled [I know now the beloved]

  by Gregory Orr

I know now the beloved
Has no fixed abode,
That each body 
She inhabits
Is only a temporary
Home.
             That she
Casts off forms
As eagerly
As lovers shed clothes.

I accept that he's
Just passing through
That flower
Or that stone.

And yet, it makes 
Me dizzy—
The way he hides
In the flow of it,
The way she shifts
In fluid motions,
Becoming other things.

I want to stop him— 
If only briefly.
I want to lure her
To the surface
And catch her
In this net of words.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23050#sthash.M2uRCUpB.dpuf

Tupelo's 30/30 Project

All the ways the small press world sustain literature are on my mind today! As I work to complete my own poetry book manuscript, and read the Poetry Month daily poems of friends, I'm so grateful to be a poet among poets. Tupelo Press has come up with a unique way to help sustain their work, in the 30/30 Project. A poem a day each month from nine poets. This May, my friend Alan Kleiman, who has a forthcoming book, is one of the featured poets. What wonderful things he and the other poets are doing with words!

Kisses

Nissa in Rachel's Arms

I was invited by Kaaren Kitchell and Richard Beban to submit for their ParisPlay site's annual "Sensual Surprise" Surrealist Café, so I sent a poem about kisses. Not just any kisses, a very special kind -- doggie kisses. Before my beautiful Silky Terrier Nissa died, about a year ago I wrote the poem about the way she liked to bestow kisses as a form of language. In honor of Nissa, it's published today.

Follow Love - Tribute to Nissa the Adorable

It’s always near. Love is breath

a fragrant breeze from a body

turning toward you with a need

for the touch of your hand.

A scent of longing for you

to offer a cup of food and your

longing for the grateful gaze.

Follow love. Let it wash death away.

Even now I feel the puppy’s paws

prance on my thigh, telling me

to wake up and follow her

downstairs to the empty bowl

and fill it, then she fills my face

with quick, light kisses.

I followed love into years of joyful service,

As a mother. She became my daughter.

God spelled backwards, as my mother liked to say.

Day after day, I felt the whole rolling ball

of Earth whirl around her

as I stroked the silken hair, feeling ribs

and spine and belly’s tautness,

the hard haunch muscles. As I trotted with her

down the street, the earth loved her

in animal scents and soft dirt, in seed pods

that clung to her as if to sprout

in that platinum hair. Like Flora, she danced

up the road and back, a silver sprite.

I followed love and fell in

plunging in.

Love is bottomless

even when its object disappears

into birth's interiority, the cave

that rolls time backwards.

Rachel Dacus

4-22-13

Continuing my April revise-a-poem-daily exercise, I worked on this one today. How's your April exercise going, whatever it is?

Repairing with the Filament of Red Spiders

I stepped out on the deck this morning

while the clouds leapt like whales

breaching the blue surface.

Red spiders had suspended where I walk

to water plants. Had to sweep them

into corners with my broom and reset

their daily task, my daily task.

That’s how your retreat from us

has cut through our spun webs,

giving us each day the need to begin 

with great focus from a single point.

The clouds remind me how big

the ocean is, if left in it, keep stroking,

let it be unconquerable except

leap by leap, carrying the thread.

Let us toss it forward like the red

spiders who while we sleep

must breast-stroke through the moving dark.

Revising a Poem a Day in April

A Breeze

All I need is a breeze

from the sky’s highest plane

and I’m a lizard on a rock,

letting sink into my cells

the currents from a furnace

that never goes out,

the way the heart’s never do.

I look up from my rock

at the mare’s tail canopy

and its frozen flow

find my need for the streaming heat,

to imbibe the costume of light

until I am brightness

swallowing brightness

and have forgotten the faces

of lost loves

in the sun’s.

Tiferet Talks now out in book form

The wonderful Tiferet Talks on Blogtalkradio are now out in Tiferet Talks Interview Anthology -- a perfect way to treat yourself to something special for Poetry Month! The book is described on Tiferet's site this way:

The Tiferet Talk Interviews is a fascinating collection of twelve interviews transcribed from the Tiferet Talk Radio show, conducted by award-winning, bestselling author and host, Melissa Studdard, with a forward by Donna Baier Stein, Publisher of Tiferet Journal. Some of the world’s most notable writers and spiritual leaders share their thoughts on writing, tolerance, and the world we live in today.

Enjoy!

Any of your favorite books you'd like to suggest for Poetry Month? Bring em on! Be well, write well, and write lots!

Happy National Poetry Month! To celebrate, I'm giving away Kindle edition copies of my book Earth Lessons, which is available in print and e-book at Amazon. 

Earth Lessons - Kindle Edition Free Until April 6!

If you'd like to have the book for your Kindle, it's free for five days this week! Hope you enjoy it and enjoy the start of a month of celebrating poetry.