Femme
au chapeau, Poems by Rachel Dacus
The
garlanded surfaces of Rachel Dacus’ Femme au chapeau serve at once to entice readers
into their sphere and to obscure the deeper turmoil and music welling within.
Sample Poems by Rachel Dacus
“The chief strength of these impressive poems lies in their unsentimental
candor, their observant eye, and their arresting and vivid imagery. The best
among them come alive as scenes from several complex lives movingly conveyed.
Rachel Dacus’ exceptional imagination extends to such subjects as foreign
cities, the tenacity of the immigrant memory, ethnic and religious loyalties
and divisions, art and its echoes in consciousness, and the writer’s
life approached from ingenious angles. This is a book to relish for such insights,
by a poet clearly up for the ride, and not afraid of the risks.”—Rhina
Espaillat
“Rachel Dacus has a talent for writing music into our language and her
new book, Femme au chapeau, showcases
Dacus’ ability to bring us into her song. Whether we’re in the
kitchen making apple pie or singing in the Pandaleshwar Caves, we are in the
lyric of the poem, suspended in a blazing new ocean, and Dacus’ enthusiasm
for writing stays with us and here, we all belong.”—Kelli Russell
Agodon
“In her latest collection of poetry, Rachel Dacus ravels and unravels
the rich uncertainties of life. Her poems, strange but startlingly familiar,
seize and hold the reader. In her concise and often contemplative mode, we
sense the miracle of time without end. She is honestly engaged in life, her
heart big enough, her eyes keen enough, she ‘...delicately scans/ a
stream of images…air words, scent sentences revealing the earth’s
divine underside.’ Dacus is a sure and talented poet. Her rhymes flow
skillfully past, almost mute, but they are beautifully imbedded in the body
of the poem. Her clear-sighted tenderness avoids sentimentality but at the
same time allows her wild imagination free rein.”—Ruth Daigon
Rachel Dacus was born in Buffalo, New York in 1949 and grew up in southern
California, in the oceanside town of San Pedro, where she developed a love
of the ocean and the written word, often at the same time. She majored in
English, French Literature and counterculture at U.C. Berkeley during the
interesting 1960s. Earth Lessons is her first poetry collection,
published by Bellowing Ark Press. It was followed by a poetry-and-music CD,
A God You Can Dance. Ms. Dacus’ poetry was featured in the
May, 2004 issue of Ygdrasil, with an introduction by Oswald LeWinter,
author of Shakespeare in Europe. Among the many journals that have published
her poetry and prose are The Atlanta Review, Bellingham Review, Boulevard,
Comstock Review, Gumball, Image: A Journal of the Arts & Religion, Many
Mountains Moving, The National Poetry Journal, North American Review, Rattapallax
and Swink. Her poems have been included in several
anthologies: Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan
University Press; 2000), The Poetry of Roses (Abrams; 1995)
and The Best of Melic (Melic Review, 2001). Online, her work appears
in 2 River, 3rd Muse Poetry Journal,
Adirondack Review, Alsop Review, Avatar Review, BigCityLit.com, Melic Review,
pif, Stirring, Terrain and The Pedestal
Magazine.
$17.00, 84 pages, ISBN: 1932339825