Femme au chapeau

By Rachel Dacus

In Rachel Dacus ́s poetry collection, Femme au chapeau, the textured worlds of her sounds and incredibly dense images create a new poetry that is–like Wallace Stevens ́–constructed of the private symbol and metaphor. Once conquered, this is a realm of dazzling strangeness and beauty. In the offbeat and almost surrealistic way Dacus manages to thrill us with her poems. Femme au chapeau, whose title is taken from a portrait that Matisse painted of his wife–a painting that presaged French Fauvism–is really more like a Frida Kahlo painting: gorgeously off-putting in its metaphoric twists, mesmerizingly complex, startling and horrific in its images, and yet so unique that it lives on its own terms after a while and demands that the reader accept them. Dacus ́s subjects are far-ranging, from the metaphoric spins she puts on an art-obsessed father who slides into brutality (one poem, "Ocean House," evokes him–or at least his mouth–as the ocean itself) to a simply rendered yet no less complex poem on the narrator ́s mother making apple pie. One reviewer called it "thrilling, one-of-a-kind poetry".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rachel Dacus
• Release date: Sep 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370282524

Rachel Dacus

Rachel Abramson Dacus is a poet and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of three poetry books and a spoken word poetry CD. Dacus’ most recent book, Gods of Water and Air, combines poetry, prose, and drama. It follows two poetry collections, Earth Lessons and Femme au Chapeau.Gods of Water and Air is a passionate exploration of personal transformation, delving into everything from reincarnation to growing up with an artist and rocket scientist father, to living in an immigrant community on the Pacific Ocean. One reviewer called the book “as deliciously diverse as it is spellbinding.”Her poetry, essays, stories, and book reviews have appeared in Atlanta Review, Boulevard, Drunken Boat, The Pedestal, Valaparaiso Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner, as well as in many poetry anthologies. She is at work on a novel of the great Baroque sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini. An art history trip to study the Italian Renaissance also inspired essays, one of which is included in the anthology Italy: A Love Story: Women Write About the Italian Experience (Seal Press).With a rocket engineer father who was also an accomplished painter and a mother who was a musician, Rachel’s creativity was ignited early. She works as a fundraising consultant to nonprofit organizations spanning the arts, social services, and hospitals.

Book preview

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