Blue Tarp is a collection of poems that follows the innocence of a young teacher in a young marriage into the experience of hard conversations, loss and divorce. Using imagery from her childhood growing up in northern California, Rachel Joy Welcher (formerly Watson) explores her grief and growing pains.
“Welcher searches for 'life/under the cracked surface/of things, ' and as I read her poems, I was compelled by her gentle and prayerful curiosity. May we all share that same spirit."
-Michael Wright, FULLER studio and magazine
I'm always encouraged to see young poets resist the temptation to be fancy or obtuse on the page. There is a profound beauty in plainness. That's what I felt reading through Rachel Joy Watson's poetry - beauty, and all of its cousins - like goodness and grief and desire and sorrow and wonder and loneliness. More than one poem in this collection caused me to sigh...and I like that.
-John Blase, The Jubilee
Poem from the collection:
Salinas
When you suddenly have to
start over
you end up Googling places
you never considered living before.
“Salinas, California.”
Maybe I just want to
touch the earth
Steinbeck wrote about
with twisted admiration
as if it was worth
staying,
digging,
and waiting for the drought to end.
Maybe it’s the kind of dirt
that has fresh potato potential,
because of the small living things
underneath
that are willing to take shallow breaths
until the day they feel
water
trickle down their backs again.
Maybe there is life
under the cracked surface
of things.
Either way, the apartments are too expensive.
You can purchase the chapbook here.
My husband grew up in Salinas, and his parents only just moved to be closer to us this year! My Mother In Law lived there, never moved away, until now.
"Maybe there is life
under the cracked surface
of things."
I rememer this little book....I remember that last name....what iterations of wonder you've lived with, Rachel. And the poems continue to bubble forth from the fountain of your heart.