Writing:
Publications:
-Song and Spectacle
-Notes on an Arrival and Departure
-Giving my Body to Science
"Candid, heartfelt, melodious, Rachel Rose's poems have the virtue of standing at once close to their subject and at a wise remove. Her voice travels intimately into regions of death, love, suffering and exaltation; meanwhile, that same voice performs the role of chorus and spirit-guide, sagely commenting on the travails of her embroiled protagonists."
--Wayne Koestenbaum on Song & Spectacle.
"The heart, the unborn child, even death has a song in these pages. Her language is so dense, so daring, so rich. Who else but Rachel Rose can describe the summer sun as slipping into the ocean "like a placenta in a basin," or a bat as "a black ball of yarn with two hooks." Read this book and you'll discover "The other use for fire."
--Lorna Crozier on Song & Spectacle.
"She is known as a poet whose work openly speaks out against abuse, and her second collection is no less provocative than her first...Rose's fury is as masterful as it is humane, her poetry as haunting as it is vibrant."
--Clarice Foster, The Globe and Mail, 2006
"Wit with teeth."
--Marion K. Stocking, review of Best American Poetry in Beloit Poetry Journal Winter 2001-2002.
POEMS: http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.ca/2002/01/what-we-heard-about-japanese-rachel.html
http://www.rattle.com/poetry/what-we-heard-about-the-americans-by-rachel-rose/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/182/6#!/20606293
American Pageant
How we applauded you, pint-sized tart
singing and swinging to A Cowboy’s Sweetheart.
Who taught you the art of sashay, of rouge,
the French manicure? Who taught you to bruise?
Who bleached your pearly teeth before each show?
Who curled your tinted hair and tied the bow?
We can offer you nothing, especially not the promise
it won’t happen again. Jonbenet, angel, one request:
If you see the Smith boys floating around those parts
tell them that Susan still dots her “i’s” with little hearts
in all her prison letters. Tell them she confessed.
A mother who put her shoulder to her work, paused to rest,
pushed. The boys were asleep in the back until they woke
to a lake pierced by headlights, birth in reverse.
There was no phantom African, no dark abductor,
though we pictured him standing where she stood on shore.
Water poured through windows, flooded the cocoon.
Silence of a woman alone with the moon.