This well-pedigreed book takes its title from the Henri Matisse painting of the same name. In the painting (which graces Dacus' book cover, so there's no doubt of what the painting evokes in her title poem), Matisse's wife, like many wives of men dubbed great in their discipline by history, is nameless; her role as wife is the key here. Dacus' title poem describes her, but also locates her both in her own time and in ours. The final questions she asks: "If we can't escape birth or condition,/ what's the point? If not now, when?/ Who's will I be, Henri, when I come to fruition?/ as a woman all rainbow atomic ignition" are clearly the central questions of the book's speaker. The poems riff across a lifetime: the first section addressing childhood, a father's engagement or distraction, family; the second meditating on community, place; the third, into adulthood and its widening circle of concerns. At the end, if she can "remove that chapeau, and its crushing fruit," who will the woman who emerges from underneath be? An agent of her own life, perhaps, but for now, she is the ruminator, observing her past, her circumstances, and just now beginning to realize how she has been shaped by them, how they have painted her into being.

This metaphor for self in the painting is a smart and deeply troubled one that evokes women's historic role as the observed vis a vis the male eye (the idea of a the "male gaze" either through painting or, more recently, through the lens of a camera, has been deeply plumbed by feminist thinkers) is replaced by the meta cognitive awakening of the speaker as she wrests control of her own identity in a way the painter's wife never could. Dacus becomes the analog of the painter, and, not surprisingly perhaps, these poems are not simple meditations; they are deeply crafted, and Dacus uses a broad palette of craft elements as she paints her poems: this is no Sunday afternoon poet-as-self-therapist. Her poems are not strictly formal, but throughout, one can find sonnets, phantoms, ghazals, even a terzanelle (announced in the title of that poem, so there's no mistaking it), and more. Her palette is not of paint, but of sound, and she is in control of her rhyme and meter, her cadence and syncopation, her assonance and consonance. This is a poetry collection that is not embarrassed to be poetic. To read a Rachel Dacus poem is to look at a canvas that has been painted and layered and scraped and painted and glazed, each stroke, each color meant to vibrate on its own and in relation to what is next to it. These are poems that have been built, one layer at a time, the time to let the paint dry allowed before the application of what comes next, until the effect has been assembled.

It is not a conceit to talk this way about Dacus' book; she knows what she's doing, and a number of poems speak to the matter of art and artists such as "Ballet Teacher's Catechism": "You'll practice every day until you die./ When years of sweat have dried, call it Art." And again in "Linear Perspective with Mrs. Pappanickolas" which explores the confluence of lines in art, but also art and mythology, and humanity inside stereotypes, and the awakening of consciousness:

We wonder why a Cyclopean teacher
with a name that jingles
is passing out chalk and paper.
A few more strokes: Copy please!...

And we each close and eye to see
that the lines come together but also retreat.
Distance appears in the narrowing;
things turn into other things and gorgons
become art teachers as, with a creak of chalk,
we peer through a magic eye.

Rachel Dacus's biography mentions the ocean as being extremely important to her. It figures into the poems importantly, too; the father's mouth even becomes it once, and Dacus plumbs it depths. Here are two very different poems excerpts that end with the ocean:

From "Kids of the Rocket Engineer"

In America, you can make your own faith.
I'm mud-mixing mine from their discards and nubs,
kneeling over artifacts: seed, stone, ice plant,
purse seiners, loquats-

Those fruits that open faster than holy books.
Their mahogany pits are shaped like beating
hearts, living sculptures, light-spilling chalices,
oceans in rhythm.

And then again, here at the end of the poem "Crossing Myself in Temple"

past your aunts in black on red porches
shouting words with upturned toes. We all sling
kelp under the lifeguard's chair, Danilovich
and Pappadakis browning the same.
Whether your father looks out to sea or up
to sky, Nick's dad is right when he says a family
has everything here: spread
table, grandfather snoring down the hall.
We are all the day's catch.
Here, we all belong to the ocean.

These poem excerpts give one a sense of the way Rachel Dacus makes use of the past. She appropriates the stuff of memory, history, and place and re-assembles them to create small portraits. It's a lovely, meditative collection by a very intelligent and thoughtful craftsperson. It is also a collection about becoming and about self-agency. A very smart read.