"Today in the Forest" A New Book by Cindy Rinne and Toti O'Brien, February 2021

ISBN  978-1-945938-43-6 Color Paperback, 46 pages, $20

ISBN 978-1-945938-45-0 E-Book in PDF,  only on lulu.com, $10 

ISBN 978-1-945938-44-3  EBook in e-Pub, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, etc. $10

Moonrise Press announces the publication of "Today in the Forest," a mysterious and inspired poetry and art book that will stir your imagination. This gem of a book has been created by Cindy Rinne, poet and fiber artist, and Toti O'Brien, artist, musician, and poet, with Cindy's poems and Toti's images in a delightful counterpoint of words and visions. 

The first reading is scheduled by Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga on Zoom on Sunday, March 21, 2021 at 4:30 pm. To request a link email Maja Trochimczyk at maja@moonrisepress.com or Dorothy Skiles at dmhskiles@gmail.com. In addition to discussing her imagery and techniques, Toti ead some of her poems - since the book includes only poetry by Cindy Rinne. Two open mic sessions were available, before and after the feature presentation.  

Video recording of the reading on YouTube:https://youtu.be/7sZM8GSJJgU

ABOUT THIS BOOK

"I was mesmerized reading Today in the Forest. O’Brien and Rinne have created a luminous, mythical world inhabited by a Moon Goddess, wolf-people, and various imaginative delights. It is a world destroyed or horribly threatened, yet I felt protection, care, and survival here. Today in the Forest is a poetic journey illuminated with hope and memory."

   ~ Stacy Russo, author of Love Activism and We Were Going to Change the World

"As if in the forest all the problems of our world are being solved under the bark of trees, in an unseen parallel world, a precise and healing mythology is acted out by half human half visionary figures. Here, illustrated with powerful hand by someone who has been there, and witnessed, Toti O'Brien as master-artist, embodies the magical words of storyteller Cindy Rinne whose characters, her intimates, have allowed her to share their secrets at work.

       Cindy has recorded and given us a magic scroll. Toti has drawn and given us the map. "She sees the sand bottom and tries to hold the tree's shadow. A murmur gurgles as golden rocks beckon her to climb." ~ Cindy Rinne

       We need to be here for hope." 

    ~ Kath Abela Wilson, leader of Poets on Site, author of  Figures of Humor and Strange Beauty (Glass Lyre Press, 2019)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Cindy Rinne creates fiber art and writes in San Bernardino, CA. Cindy is the author of several books: silence between drumbeats (Four Feathers Press), Letters Under Rock with Bory Thach, (Elyssar Press), and others. Her poetry appeared or is forthcoming: Anti-Heroin Chic, Verse-Virtual, LitGleam, and others, plus several anthologies. www.fiberverse.com

 Toti O’Brien’s mixed media have been exhibited in group and solo shows, in Europe and the US, since 1995. She has illustrated several children books and two memoirs. Her artwork is on the cover of several books and it was most recently featured in pethricor, Two Hawks, Arkana and Argo. More about her work can be found at http://totihan.net/index.html

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Poems by Cindy Rinne 

Images by Toti O’Brien

Part I – Moon Goddess

Anahita Speaks Today in the Forest 3

Today in the Forest                 4 

Presence / Absence                 5 

Anahita’s Horses                 6

Some Days Coral Mustang         7

Deep-Downness                         8

Deep-Downness                         9

Rain Stick                         10

Hollowed Plant                 11

At All Cost                         12

At All Cost                         13

Return from the Grave                 14

Beneath Quarter Moon         15

Crystalwind Vanishes and Finds a Map         16

After all these Years of Waiting         17

Food from Starshine                 18 

Decay                         19

Thinks of Her Family                 20

Part II – Crystalwind’s Family

The Elements                 23

Merger of Heartbeat and Bark                 24

Memories                         25

One Loop Left                26 

The Wolf Flower                         27 

Exposed Roots                         28 

Exposed Roots                 29 

Rings of Time                 30 

Azurite Knows Two Bodies         31

No Shortness of Breath                 32

Gentleness                         33

Sister Runs                         34

Murmurs                         35

Crystalwind Imagines Anahita                 36

Acknowledgements                 38

About the Authors                 39

Book Review by Michael Paul Hogan, in London Grip Poetry Review online, November 2022:

https://londongrip.co.uk/2022/11/london-grip-poetry-review-cindy-rinne

Is it possible to create a myth? Or should they evolve out of some remote and unrecorded past, only gaining the concrete legitimacy of words when they have been refined and expanded over centuries of oral transmutation? Does poetry represent a myth’s end in the sense that the myth is now completed? That it can no longer be told in many versions, but now must be read as a single unified work?

The genius of Cindy Rinne (greatly aided by the genius of her illustrator, Toti O’Brien) is that she has managed to sidestep these questions by not exactly creating a myth, but presenting us with the fragments of a myth, one that might have been developed orally then been crystallised by poets, but now resembles the shards of pottery and pieces of fresco from which an archaeologist might recreate the kingdom of Sparta or the city of Troy. The myth, she seems to say, has been forgotten, buried under a heap of modern imagery; from these fragments I now present to you, you must recreate the myth for yourself. [...]

Ultimately, Today in the Forest defies any kind of conventional revue. The text is like trying to negotiate an entirely blacked-out village by the occasional flash of lightning; the illustrations need to be seen to be appreciated; the effect of the combination of the two must, therefore, be taken on trust. I can only conclude by saying that Cindy Rinne and Toti O’Brien have between them created a small masterpiece. It deserves all the success I hope it achieves.

Review of Toti O'Brien's "An Alphabet of Birds" by Mari Werner

 

Book Review by Mari Werner: An Alphabet of Birds by Toti O’Brien

Published in Poetry Letter No. 1, 2021, California State Poetry Society

Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, October 2020; 

http://www.moonrisepress.com/alphabet-of-birds.html

ISBN 978-1-945938-41-2, paperback, 184 pp, $15.00; 

ISBN 978-1-945938-42-9, ebook in ePub, $10.00

Preview by Quill and Parchment - New Books Announcement

http://quillandparchment.com/archives/Feb2021/vol236.html

In mindfulness meditation, the object of the practice is to be fully present in the moment. In Toti O’Brien’s prose collection, An Alphabet of Birds, the stories are told by a narrator who is keenly in the moment and acutely perceptive—so much so that the reading experience can become like a meditation. This is a prose collection but it’s difficult to nail down whether they’re stories, essays, or prose poems, fiction or creative non-fiction. And it isn’t necessary. These are literary pieces told through a rare and distinctive voice that slips effortlessly from the real to the surreal, and from the outer to the inner world. The details that bring a story to life and bring a universe into the mind of the reader are poured so naturally into the pages that it’s easy to forget one is reading.

The title of the piece, Five Senses, may be something of a representation of the character of the book— except that it turns out not to be limited to five. This particular piece is an intriguing exploration of the perceptions, influences, and decisions that shape or foreshadow the vectors of life from an early age. It begins with the inner story of a small child quenching her thirst for sense, experience, and understanding under the wise tutelage of her grandparents, or out on her own roaming orchards and wild ravines.

Her explorations and the expansion of her world come to life in full detail, but at the same time other senses are invoked in the reader, such as developing a love for the grandfather or feeling the apprehensive chill of another side of the child’s life. “Back in town with her parents, in winter, she’ll start school. When spring and the swallows will come she will return South, Grandma promises. Right. She begins waiting for spring without further ado.” 

The words are beautifully written without calling attention to themselves. They conjure another realm without particular regard for the confines of time and the standard definitions of how things work in the ‘real’ world. Most of the pieces are not linear, they ride conceptually in what flows like gliding down a river on a raft. 

O’Brien paints both the outer and the inner landscape in vivid detail. In Sunset Walk, the reason for the deep grieving taking place in the inner world of the walker is never revealed, but the grief is interwoven as the outer world plays in full color texture and motion. “And I long for every house, for every life I haven’t lived, feeling both its sweet promise and its irreparable loss.”

Parts of the book are humorous in a wry matter-of-fact way devoid of any self-conscious effort to make you laugh. For example, the squirrel contemplating an orange in Creation: “Judging by the gravity of its frown it must be debating large matters, either the original sin (the type of fruit makes no difference, all round juicy things work, temptation-wise) or else global issues such as climate change, inequality, resource shortage…” Or in Darwin where the reader enters a place in which everyone knows a bird doesn’t fly. “It can’t for a crucial reason, a deal-breaker. Such a feat would take lots of oxygen, and birds talk too much. In fact, they never stop. That is why fish fly, dear, fish only. Because they shut up.” One may be left wondering if other assumptions about the structures of reality have evaporated too. 

TOTI O'BRIEN

The pieces, even the humorous ones, are philosophical, but never by way of bringing messages tied up in packages. The narrating voice is deeply inquisitive and observant, not just of physical perceptions and the inner emotional realm, but also of the world at large, the universe, the perennial questions related to being a human on Earth. It raises questions, opens doors, explores ideas—such as this from the first-person piece, September, as the narrator listens to Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy: “Quite a simple message. Sursum corda, be brave, never give up. Isn’t it what Beethoven always intends? He did. The man is long dead. But his notes are resounding against my bones, striking my membranes. They vibrate through my throat, echo within my ears. The composer is dead, but he’s not…I know it is common sense. Still, how common is that? What outlives the body, where, why?”

Though this work visits many different emotions and situations, overall, it provides a collection of clear windows into colors, tastes, textures and music of life that are there to be experienced—if you’re paying attention. This is gifted writing that deserves a broad readership and critical attention.

~ Mari Werner, Claremont, CA

Published in California State Poetry Society's "Poetry Letter," no. 1, 2021, in PDF format and on CSPS Blog: https://www.californiastatepoetrysociety.com/2021/02/poetry-letter-no-1-2021-reviews-of.html

An Alphabet of Birds by Toti O'Brien - Zoom Reading, Saturday, December 5, 2020 at 3 pm

AN ALPHABET OF BIRDS

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Topic: Moonrise Press Presents Toti O'Brien's An Alphabet of Birds

Time: Dec 5, 2020 03:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Recording on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RYti3hBLs1Q

This presentation is partly sponsored by the Dignity Health Foundation, through a grant for "Close to Nature" Project for Phoenix Houses of Los Angeles, with the California State Poetry as one of the collaborating partners. 

Link to the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYti3hBLs1Q

ABOUT THIS BOOK

http://www.moonrisepress.com/alphabet-of-birds.html

Buy it now: ISBN 978-1-945938-41-2, paperback, 184 pages, $15.00

Buy it now: ISBN 978-1-945938-42-9, ebook in ePub format, $10.00

Maja Trochimczyk with Toti's book

Not quite hard to decipher… on the contrary, friendly and familiar sounding, An Alphabet of Birds is a prose collection inspired by “daily nature,” by those kerchiefs of landscape gracing us through a kitchen door, a car window, in the middle of our urban, busy life. They are glimpses and fragments, fugitive and yet poignant, loaded with surprise, magic, lessons to learn or else mysteries for the heart to treasure in secret, in awe. 

~ Toti O’Brien, author

Toti O'Brien during her reading, Dec 5, 2020

An Alphabet of Birds encompasses an entire bestiary, from its namesake birds to the squirrel that owns the narrator’s backyard to the bears that own the salmon streams. The ground of these short prose pieces is everyday life, the “daily display of splendor.” Toti O’Brien invokes a world where what is wry and wise meets what is whimsical and surreal. Questions tumble, pile on top of one another, full of possibilities and speculation. O’Brien’s language has a rolling rhythm that unspools like an incantation. Fall under her spell and journey with her into the  mysteries of the quotidian.

~ Cynthia Anderson, author of Now Voyager and Route

This prose collection of 34 short stories describes the vagaries of birds, animals, plants, seen and described by a keen and talented observer. The author has patience, a gift of attentive focus on their behaviors and transformation, and a talent to write down the reflections on the meaning of these behaviors and transformation in the constant flow of daily life. Toti O'Brien author is a multi-talented poet, writer, artist, musician, and a friend of all living beings, the whole Earth.

~ Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D., Moonrise Press 

TOTI O’BRIEN is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish last name. She was born in Rome, Italy, raised in Sicily and France. After touring Europe and Brazil with her itinerant theater, in the early nineties, she established herself in Los Angeles where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. O’Brien’s first book of stories, Africa, was published in 1990. It was followed by another short story collection, Reversed Memories, two illustrated children books and an essay collection, Lanterna Magica, gathering selected work out of her long-term collaboration with Italian journals and magazines. O’Brien started writing in the English language in 2004. Since then, her poetry, fiction and non-fiction were published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, India, Australia, and all over the world. 

Her most recent appearances include The Moth, The Hamilton Stone, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today. Her poetry collection Other Maidens (BlazeVOX, 2020) and a prose collection, Pages of a Broken Diary (Pskj’s Porch, 2021), are about to be released. Her work was nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fiction, Best American Essay, the Pushcart, and various other prizes. Her memoir ‘Nicotine’ won a nonfiction prose award in 2018. 

Her essay ‘Blur In The Front Line’ won the Anthony Award in 2016. Besides her creative writing, she contributes articles and reviews about art, music, film, literature and civilization to several magazines. She also translates poetry and prose from the Italian, the Spanish, and the French. O’Brien’s multimedia artwork was exhibited in group and solo shows in Europe and the US, since the early nineties. Her paintings, sculptures, collages and textiles were featured in many publications, and she has produced book covers and illustrations.

Table of Contents

In the Moonlight — 3 

The Lawn — 4 

The Staircase — 9 

The Leaf and the Butterfly — 14 

Darwin —17 

Pavo Regina — 21 

Terra Firma — 29 

Speculum — 33 

Milagros — 37 

Sunset Walk — 39 

Doves — 42

Precious — 47 

The Decadence of Grapefruit —49 

Spectrum — 58 

Dog Days — 61 

The Salmon and the Bear — 64 

Beautiful Bones — 69 

Creation — 72 

In the Garden — 81 

Lunacy — 84 

September — 93 

November — 99 

Peacocks — 102 

Engraved — 105 

Five Senses — 109 

At Risk — 127 

The Statue —129 

Augur — 134 

The Flowers — 139 

The Fountain — 141 

Part Out — 158 

An Alphabet of Birds —164

The Volvo and the Bike —168 

Gardener’s Companion — 172 

About the Author — 174