Call for Submissions to Village Poets Anthology, Due January 31, 2020

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Village Poets Monthly Poetry Readings at Bolton Hall Museum, in Tujunga, CA, Moonrise Press will issue an anthology of Featured Poets and frequent guests sustaining the VP Readings over the past decade, 2010-2020. Edited by Marlene Hitt and Maja Trochimczyk, the anthology will provide a portrait of our poets and documentation of our readings. It will be published in paperback and ePub e-book formats, distributed by Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other booksellers, as well as via Moonrise Press.

Each featured poet is invited to submit 1-3 poems (fitting on up to two page 6X9, standard trade book size), a brief biography (150 words), and a portrait. A favorite photo from the readings is also welcome.  Guests who frequently read their work during the monthly events are also invited to submit their work. The poems may be previously published, if they are a favorite of their authors.

To submit, send an email to Maja Trochimczyk, maja@moonrisepress.com, with the subject: “VP Anthology Submission – Name” by January 31, 2020. The attached one Word file must include name, address, email, phone number of the poet, with brief bio and poems in Book Antiqua font, size 11. Photo, resolution 300 dpi should be the second attachment. The anthology will be published by June 2020 and celebrated in a group reading at Bolton Hall Museum. Poets will receive the anthology in PDF and eBook formats and will be able to purchase the paperbacks at 50% of retail price.

More information will be posted on our blog: villagepoets.blogspot.com

ABOUT VILLAGE POETS: Village Poets of Sunland Tujunga is a group of former Poets Laureate of Sunland Tujunga (L to R: Elsa Frausto, Dorothy Skiles, Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, Pamela Shea, and Maja Trochimczyk). They organize poetry readings in their beautiful foothill community, write poetry, and publish books, making sure that poetry life is rich and vibrant in the foothills. Every two years, Village Poets organize a competition for the Poet-Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga (currently serving: Pamela Shea). Another continuing project is the Village Poets Monthly Reading at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, CA. Visit: www.villagepoets.com   www.moonrisepress.com.

MARLENE HITT was the first Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga (1999-2001). She has been a member of the Chupa Rosa Writers of Sunland-Tujunga and the Foothills since its inception in 1985. In addition to numerous poetry chapbooks, anthologies and readings, she has authored a non-fiction book Sunland-Tujunga, from Village to City. She serves at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga as Museum Director and docent. In addition to her poetry activities, she has served as history writer for the Foothill Leader, Glendale News Press, North Valley Reporter, and Voice of the Village newspapers, as well as the Shadow Hills Property Owners Association newsletter. She has been honored as the Woman of Achievement by the Business and Professional Women's Club. She lives happily ever after with her husband Lloyd and an outdoor cat named Lautrémont.  Her poetry collection Clocks and Water Drops was published by Moonrise Press in 2015.

DR. MAJA TROCHIMCZYK, the sixth Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga (2010-2012), is a poet, music historian, photographer, and non-profit director born in Poland and living in California (www.trochimczyk.net). She selects and invites poets to feature at the Village Poets series  - the final approval is made by the whole group. She published seven books on music, five volumes of poetry, and three anthologies (Chopin with Cherries, Meditations on Divine Names and Grateful Conversations). Hundreds of her articles and poems appeared in English, Polish, as well as in German, French, Chinese, Spanish and Serbian translations. The venues for her poetry included: Altadena Poetry Review, Loch Raven Review, Epiphany Magazine, Lily Review, Ekphrasis Journal, Quill and Parchment, Magnapoets, The Cosmopolitan Review, The Scream Online, The Original Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology, Lummox Journal, Phantom Seed, Spectrum, Poezja Dzisiaj, OccuPoetry, as well as anthologies published by Poets on Site, Southern California Haiku Study Group, and others.

She taught music history at McGill University and USC. Trochimczyk presented papers at over 90 national and international conferences in Poland, France, Germany, Hungary, U.K., Canada, and the U.S. She received awards and fellowships from ACLS, SSHRCC, USC, McGill University, MPE Fraternity, Polish American Historical Association, City and County of Los Angeles, and Poland’s Ministry of Culture. The Senior Director of Planning at Phoenix Houses of California, President of California State Poetry Society, President of Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club, Trochimczyk also serves as Communications Director and Board Secretary for the Polish American Historical Association.  She is the owner of Moonrise Press and maintains several blogs: poetrylaurels, chopinwithcherries, moonrisepress, PAHAnews, californiastatepoetrysociety.com, and this one – all on blogspot.com.

Grateful Conversations Reading at Second Sunday, October 13, 2019

Second Sunday Poetry Series is an Open Mic poetry show, hosted by Alex M. Frankel, that happens on the second Sunday of every month. Great poets perform their work, sell and sign books, and mingle with audience members and open mic participants. 

Reading from Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford will take place on October 13th, 2019 at 5pm at The Studio Theatre at St. Denis Building
3433 Cahuenga Blvd West Los Angeles 90068  (Near Universal Studios)

Participants will include Lois P. Jones, Kathi Stafford, Susan Rogers, and Ambika Talwar.

GRATEFUL CONVERSATIONS is a portrait of a group of female poets from California, who come together each month to hone their craft and share their verse.  Known as Westside Women Writers and active as a group since 2008, they include Millicent Borges Accardi, Madeleine S. Butcher, Georgia Jones Davis, Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Kathi Stafford, Sonya Sabanac, Ambika Talwar and Maja Trochimczyk.

In the words of the WWW founder, Millicent Borges Accardi, this is “a community of women writers working together to support each other with strong attention to craft, to grow as writers and as people in community.” The volume includes poems written for seven workshops and  poetic self-portraits of the nine writers.  Many photographs by the poets (Madeleine S. Butcher, Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Sonya Sabanac, Ambika Talwar and Maja Trochimczyk) provide illustrations for the poems.

Paperback, 280 pages, with black and white illustrations

ISBN  978-1-945938-22-1  
Color Paperback, 280 pages with color illustrations
ISBN 978-1-945938-24-5 
E-Book in EPUB format with color illustrations
ISBN 978-1-945938-23-8 

http://www.moonrisepress.com/grateful-conversations-anthology.html

ABOUT THIS BOOK: 

"Nine women poets converse, wake us up, send us to higher ground. Grateful Conversations carries us in and out of the emotion of memory, family, spirit, solid things and landscapes. Unlike much modern poetry, the nine writers present life and hope, not death and loss. This anthology gives us abundance, not scarcity, joy, not the grating irritations of guilt, fear and dissolution. There are generous portions for each poet: Accardi, Butcher, Jones-Davis, Jones, Rogers, Sabanac, Stafford, Talwar, Trochimczyk each get twenty to thirty pages of poetry with photographs taken by the poets and also there are seven sections of workshop poems. These are poets on quests for spiritual renewal, yet the poems are not sticky with New Age platitudes, but articulate, moving, textured and the reader is grateful, uplifted. “Look at these dogwood blossoms/caught in the act of flying,” writes Lois P. Jones. We look and we fly.
                                                               ~ Alice Pero, author of Thawed Stars

MORE INFORMATION:

http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/05/grateful-conversations-poetry-anthology.html (preface, table of contents)

https://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/06/sample-poems-from-grateful.html (poets' bios and sample of poems)

New Music Book - Andrzej Wendland's "Górecki, Penderecki - Diptych"

ISBN 978-1-945938-30-6  paperback (available in Poland)

ISBN 978-1-945938-31-3  PDF ebook (available worldwide from Lulu.com)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/maja-trochimczyk-and-andrzej-wendland/g%C3%B3recki-penderecki-diptych/ebook/product-24018263.html

In December 2018 and March 2019, Moonrise Press published two versions of a new book of music studies by Andrzej Wendland, entitled Górecki, Penderecki - Diptych and celebrating the 85th birth anniversaryof both composers. The book consisted of two extended essays: a) "Two Tristan Postuldes and Chorale. Górecki – Wagner, intelektual reflection" and b) "Elegy for the Dying Forest -
Krzysztof Penderecki VIII Symfonia „Lieder der Vergänglichkeit”  The paperback edition is only available in Poland, and includes essays in Polish and English. The PDF Book edition is available from lulu.com worldwide, and is in English only. Cover design by Maja Trochimczyk.

The essays, translated into English by Maja Trochimczyk, deal with "Two Tristan Postludes and Chorale" by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (1933-2010) and The Eight Symphony by Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933). They draw from philosophy, aesthetic and poetry of importance to each composer to place each work in a broad cultural context.

The essays are introduced by a following preface by the author:

"A riddle and a surprise. In these words, we can briefly define the content of two essays on the music of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki and Krzysztof Penderecki. A riddle—because an essay concerns the "secret" connection of two such distant artists as Wagner and Górecki. A surprise—because a musician writing about music will discuss Krzysztof Penderecki's work without musicological analysis, but from the perspective of reading poetic works.

Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki at his desk in Katowice, 1998

The direct pretext for writing these essays was the 85th anniversary of the birth of both composers. Primarily. Secondly, both composers made, at about the same time — in the late 1960s, the beginning of the 1970s—a sudden shift: the re-evaluation of their work. Each in his own way. From the position of avant-garde leaders, they began to turn towards tradition, harmony and beauty. In the compositions discussed here, it is not difficult to see their "connections" stretched along the axes: Górecki—Wagner, Penderecki—Mahler. Thirdly, the works in question had their premieres at the Tansman Festival (Górecki — world premiere, Penderecki — Polish premiere of the 12-movement version, the premiere that took place in  Łódź.)"

ANDRZEJ WENDLAND

Andrzej Wendland is a musician, musicologist, editor and publicist. A graduate of the Instrumental Department of the Academy of Music in Łodz, he also studied music theory and composition. He won many prizes at international competitions as a performer and composer in Poland, Italy and Greece. In 1980-1986, Wendland served as a lecturer of the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz. He collaborated with the Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne PWM as the author of the series „El Maestro”  He also collaborated with the Professional Music Press and published articles in many music magazines in Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain and Japan. 

He is the author of books: Gitara w twórczości Aleksandra Tansmana [Guitar in the Oeuvre of Aleksander Tansman] (Łódź, 1996) and Górecki. IV Symfonia Tansman Epizody. Fenomen, Żywioł, Tajemnica [Górecki. Symphony No. 4 Tansman Episodes, Phenomenon, Elements, Mystery] (Łódź 2016). His study of Górecki's Fourth Symphony appeared in Górecki in Context: Essays on Music edited by Maja Trochimczyk and published by Moonrise Press in 2017. Wendland is the founder and artistic director of the Tansman Festival –International Festival and Competition of Musical Individualities. Mr. Wendland is the recipient of many honors and prizes, including the medal „Zasłużony Kulturze Gloria Artis” from the Polish government in 2015.

Available in paperback and four ebooks in EPUB format:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/maja-trochimczyk/g%C3%B3recki-in-context-essays-on-music/paperback/product-23519706.html

Marlene & Lloyd Hitt, Moonrise Press Authors, Receive a Lifetime Achievement Award

Marlene and Lloyd Hitt with Village Poets. Photo Emil "Gene" Schulz Jr.

The Lifetime Achievement Award, Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

On July 28, 2019, at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, Village Poets presented its "Lifetime Achievement Award" to Dr. Lloyd Hitt and Marlene Hitt during a crowded poetry reading, MC-ed by poet Joe DeCenzo, and filled with loving tributes and gifts to the wonderful couple, retiring from their active duties as members of Village Poets, an organization that they co-founded in 2010 with Dorothy Skiles, Joe DeCenzo and Maja Trochimczyk.

Photo Emil "Gene" Schulz Jr.

The covers of Marlene's Hitt books and anthologies that included her work were portrayed on the large banner from her Independence Day Parade ride, an old pick up truck. It served as the centerpiece for the ceremony.

Photo by Emil "Gene" Schulz Jr.

Marlene read an excellent selection of her poems, selected to serve as a counterbalance to poems by her husband Lloyd, read  later by Joe DeCenzo.  Many of these poems were never published, though some came from her 2015 book, Clocks and Water Drops (Moonrise Press).   After a joint reading of a poem "The Remembering" with Joe DeCenzo, who represented the voice of Lloyd, he remained on the stage to present Lloyd's own poetry. 

Marlene and Joe DeCenzo read "The Remembering." Photo by Maja Trochimczyk 

THE REMEMBERING

She says she remembers
the dark meat of grouse
chunky with bites of buckshot,
cabbage fried in bacon grease,
one pot of potatoes for eleven children.

He says he remembers
sugared tomatoes stewed in the warm kitchen,
flour-and-milk pudding on a snowy day
with brown sugar and nutmeg.
The days they salted the pork.

She remembers
the root cellar full of salamanders,
chickens and peas and jams in jars,
muddy prints on the scrubbed floor,
hot water on the side of the stove.

He remembers
digging the well. Twilight harvests.
Piling manure on the side of the house,
ferrets in the henhouse,
the cow that nearly gored his mother.

She remembers
the one tin dipper in the wooden water bucket,
the babies coming one after the other,
the grandmother, the hired hands,
Sunday dinners, so many pies.

He says he remembers
the day they brought the Rumley home,
the joy of an easier days’ work,
the calving, the horse with colic,
the Northern Lights.

She says she remembers the story
of her father coming home
over unmarked prairie,
the horses leading through blizzard,
the dot of lamplight in the frosted window.

He remembers the story
of the day a mother loaned blankets
to fevered, trail-weary men.
In a month children died,
throats closed, breath trapped inside.

She remembers
her first sight of the city
the day after they eloped,
the room they stayed in,
the frame garage that became their home.

He remembers
the job that took him from her,
the full, sweet moments of coming home,
their small corner drug store,
built together. The children.

They say they remember
as they hold hands,
speak about the new ways of things,
and of their old world
which has passed away.

(c) Marlene Hitt, from Clocks and Water Drops (2015)

http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2015/05/press-release-clocks-and-water-drops-by.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/marlene-hitt/clocks-and-water-drops/paperback/product-22125602.html

Joe DeCenzo reads, Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

Joe DeCenzo read an extensive selection of poems from The Earth Time, Lloyd Hitt's first poetry collection, published in 2018 as a surprise Christmas gift from Marlene, and edited by her, with help from Maja Trochimczyk (Moonrise Press, 2018).  Since Lloyd, during Village Poets readings, contented himself with setting and putting away chairs and with reminding the poets not to make a mess, the quality and scope of his poetry surprised and delighted the audience. 

Grandfather Clock

I sip my coffee, the clock chimes six. 

In that slow, honest pensive way, the brass pendulum swings. Stops. 

The early morning sun reflects

when time stands still.

When I was eight, I believed

I could enter that split second,

that time was frozen and I could live forever. 

When I was young

there was so much time. 

When I was fifty,

time was filled with family and work, 

now my children are me.

I watch and remember.

Dad was eighty, wan and bent,

one hand gently pulling the clock chain 

the other cradling the weight 

in white cotton gloves, as if to nurse 

the minutes, that time might

                                                    stand still.

(C) 2018 by Lloyd Hitt, from The Earth Time (Moonrise Press, 2018)

Paperback:  http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-earth-time/23963399

EBook:  http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-earth-time/24521745

Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

The Presentation of the "Lifetime Achievement Award" concluded the first half of the proceedings.  On behalf of all Village Poets gathered on the stage Maja Trochimczyk thanked Lloyd and Marlene for establishing the Poet Laureate program and helping organize and manage the monthly Village Poets readings at the Bolton Hall Museum, held since 2010.  

Photo by Emil "Gene" Schulz Jr.

Photo by Kathabela Wilson

Photo by Emil "Gene" Schulz Jr.

The second half of the celebration brought in tributes and thank-yous to Lloyd and Marlene, for their lifetime of efforts to unify, protect, and beautify the community and enrich the literary scene of the foothills.

MAJA TROCHIMCZYK talked about the role of Marlene and Lloyd in the start of the Village Poets and Poet Laureate Program in Sunland-Tujunga. She thanked the  honorees for years of poetic inspiration and community involvement. Instead of reading her own poems, she presented Marlene's "Fifteen Ways of Hearing the Wind Chimes" published in the Chopin with Cherries anthology that Maja edited in 2010  as her own Poet Laureate project, celebrating the 200th birth anniversary of Fryderyk Chopin.

Photo Emil "Gene" Schulz Jr.

Peter Larsen, Photo by Maja Trochimczyk 

Other poets also read Marlene's poetry instead of her own. Village Poets regular member, Peter LARSEN read the wonderful poem "Silence" from Marlene Hitt's  Clocks and Water Drops (Moonrise Press, 2015).

SILENCE

There is something about 
silence...its weight,
the way it inhales,
leaves the room clear 
for thought.
Though quiet is never pure
as all the world knows.
Take away the whirr of fans,
traffic’s drone, 
and leave the sky
clear and quiet. 
Turn the voices off,
quiet the old record.
Sound still creeps in 
with the call of birds,
scrambled scree 
on the hillside,
bees, or a night 
full of crickets. 
Without these, 
the beating sound 
of one’s own heart.
One evening 
we sat moon-bathing, 
listening for nothing. 
But the silence,
so light, so fragile,
just slipped away.

(c) 2015 by Marlene Hitt, from Clocks and Water Drops

Standing room only. Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

Many poets expressed their gratitude by reading their favorite poems dedicated to the honorees. We heard from Joe DECENZO, Pamela SHEA, Elsa FRAUSTO, Dorothy SKILES, Dr. Mira MATARIC, Alice PERO, Ed ROSENTHAL, Beverly M. COLLINS, John ASKEW, Chris CRESSET, Cile BORMAN and other guests - including artist Cory STEIN and muralist Gerardo BARRIENTOS - that came to congratulate Lloyd and Marlene for their impact on the poetry world and the community. Local activists presented their tributes, gifts and flowers. 

Congratulations and Thank  You, Lloyd and Marlene! 

Village Poets with Lloyd and Marlene Hitt. Photo by Emil "Gene" Schulz Jr.

Review of Grateful Conversations by Michael Escoubas (Quill and Parchment, April 2019)

We are pleased to reprint the review of "Grateful Conversations" first published in Quill and Parchment, April 2019 and written by poet Michael Escoubas.  The journal announced the publication of our anthology in its December 2018 issue.

Grateful Conversations - A Poetry Anthology by Westside Women Writers
Edited by: Kathi Stafford and Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D
280 pages
ISBN: 978-1-945938-22-1 ($24.80) Paperback, 280 pp., black/white illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-945938-24-5 ($98.00) Color Paperback, 280 pages with color illustrations
ISBN 978-1-945938-23-8 ($10.00) E-Book in EPUB format with color illustrations
Publisher: Moonrise Press, 2018
To Order:
http://www.moonrisepress.com/grateful-conversations-anthology.html

Reviewed by Michael Escoubas 

Let’s meet the nine members of Westside Women Writers: Millicent Borges Accardi,
Madeleine S. Butcher, Georgia Jones-Davis, Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Sonya
Sabanac, Kathi Stafford, Ambika Talwar, and Maja Trochimczyk.

The Biblical book of Proverbs supplies an apt illustration of the poetry group known as
Westside Women Writers: “As iron sharpens iron, so one woman sharpens another.”
(Proverbs 27:17). Out of their collective diversity emerges a “communion of minds”
possible only in an atmosphere attuned to sharpening writing skills and at the same time
refining the edges of the human spirit in love and humility.

The anthology contains two parts. Part I consists of seven workshops. The workshops
were organized by group members who wrote on selected “prompts,” often taking field
trips to gain first-hand exposure to interesting art exhibits. Works of art such as the
Cycladic Harp Player, from ancient Greece, paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, exhibits
found at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and The Broad Museum provided other
challenging prompts. Themes such as “Grandparents” and “Rivers” introduced a sense of
balance and “everydayness” into the portfolio of writing topics. “Grateful Conversations”
the initial prompt, was eventually chosen as the title.

Part II, “Self Portraits,” unveils the pathos within each poet’s life.

Editors Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford preface the collection by overviewing their
respect for poetry as an “elusive gift.” Some group members have supported each other in
life and in art for more than ten years. Sometimes they surprised one another by bringing
poems on related themes without pre-planning; these occasions contributed to the
communion of minds alluded to above.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that the preface and introductory pages contain a
virtual blueprint on how to form a writer’s group. The editors provide an excellent “how
to framework” that includes premise, guidelines and expectations.

Part I. Workshops: 

I looked for and found threads in each workshop, kept my fingers
wrapped around the threads, adding new ones weaving them into a unique tapestry.
“Compassion” draws me in as Accardi feels deeply for exploited workers in an Asian
clothing factory. Stafford depicts an ICU patient, His gray hair shambles its way over the
pillow top. Sabanac speculates about life’s ultimate destination in her poem by the same
name. As Trochimczyk experiences the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg in the air, she is
grateful for conversations never had but now taking place. Rogers writes,

We are but a conversation
of light. Through this exchange we trace
everything we have.

A musical thread pervades the Cycladic Harp Player as typified by Madeleine Butcher’s poem, Still, 

We listen with you
inside the wheel of time.
We wait.
It comes
like air,
a slight vibration,
a flutter,
an echo,
across time it comes,
playing still.

Color, light and song add to the garment as the writers respond to works by Van Gogh in
Workshop 3. In My Grandmother Danced the Kazatzka, Susan Rogers uses a brilliant 24-
part cinquain sequence to add an “admiration” thread showing that

Ninety
was her life’s goal.
But life’s more than numbers.
Feisty Russian, she kick-danced till
the end.

By the end of the seven workshops, the writers weave a rich tapestry flowing like a river
where “rain falls in a sun-bright sky . . . out of the blue. . . . when you least expect it.”

Part II. Self-Portraits: 

I regret that space considerations prevent your reviewer from doing justice to the superior
work of each poet. The following brushstrokes lifted from each self-portrait will inspire
you to learn more . . .

Accardi,
Here Lies the Thing I Most Desire

Here lies the thing I most desire,
Mixed with a spoon until consistent
And predictable. A life you can shape
And let rise and then pound down
A Second time until it is comfort-soft
And feels like old fabric.

Butcher, 
Awesome

as in a feeling so small
before a thing so vastly greater than we,
a thing embodying a profound truth
which we can sense but not ever truly know

Jones-Davis
Essay

I tell people that I like to write poems. A day when I have a
poem in the works is a happy day. Whole afternoons are
gobbled up in the joy of working with language, building
something.

Jones
Shema!

Listen! The Rabbi says, God is One. Listen for what comes next.
When death arrives shema as a mezuzah on the threshold
of your lives, the soul’s last words before leaving the body.

Rogers
What the Trees Say

In the shrine
of an unknown God
I follow the path
of seekers

Sabanac
Kristina Hugging The Tree

Her face glows
and her eyes are closed
as she inhales the scent of pine.
This is her tree of life.
It is green and not yet tall,
but the sky offers so much space to grow.

Stafford
Division

We used to hold
hands near the bower. Now we lean together,
quiet, and that is enough.

Talwar
Kindlings . . .

If the breeze is tropical
or Icelandic it will matter not
This is love that weaves unceasingly
from land to water to air to fire that glows
far in ethers beyond our eyes can see

Trochimczyk
Essay: Why, Write?

For me, poetry writing truly is about “Grateful Conversations”— with
myself, with my friends, with the world . . . I am deeply thankful
for the ten years and many hours of conversing with Westside Women
Writers!

May more of us treasure poetry as a bridge to grateful conversations never had, but now 
taking place. 

"Grateful Conversations" in Ventura on April 4, 2019 and 2018 Moonrise Press Bestsellers in 2018

Poets featured in the "Grateful Conversations" anthology can be heard reading their work this week on Thursday, April 4, 2019 at 7:30 pm at the Foster Library in Ventura  (651 E. Main Street, Ventura, CA) in a reading series hosted by Phil Taggart.  Kathi Stafford, Sonya Sabanac, Lois P. Jones, and Ambika Talwar will be there and books will be available as well.

Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology 

Edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford

Paperback, 280 pp., black/white illustrations, 

  ISBN  978-1-945938-22-1  ($24.80)

Color Paperback, 280 pages with color illustration

  ISBN 978-1-945938-24-5  ($98.00)

E-Book in EPUB format with color illustrations 

 ISBN 978-1-945938-23-8 ($10.00)

http://www.moonrisepress.com/grateful-conversations-anthology.html

The ebook with color photos is available from kobo.com

https://www.kobo.com/my/en/ebook/grateful-conversations-a-poetry-anthology

You can read the editors' introduction with the table of contents on Moonrise Press Blog http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/05/grateful-conversations-poetry-anthology.html 

A sample poems can be found on this blog: 

 https://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/06/sample-poems-from-grateful.html

Kathi Stafford, Susan Rogers, Sonya Sabanac and Lois P. Jones at the anthology reading in Ventura.

MOONRISE PRESS BESTSELLERS IN 2018

Moonrise Press sold 334 books in 2018, with three poetry bestsellers - "Grateful Conversations" in the top position with over 100 copies sold, followed closely by "The Desert Hat" by Ed Rosenthal with over 60 copies, and "Gardens of the Earth: According to Nature" by Margaret Saine, with over 40 copies.  Congratulations to the poets! 

The Desert Hat by Ed Rosenthal

Published in October 2013, in paperback and e-book formats.

ISBN 978-09819693-7-4, paperback, 74 pages, $15.00

ISBN 978-098-19693-9-8, e-book in e-Pub format, 1.2 MB, $10.00

The “poet-broker” Ed Rosenthal was inspired by surviving alone in the Mojave Desert for six and a half days. The lyrical result of his ordeal, "The Desert Hat," consist of 36 poems illustrated with 12 photographs of his hat and Salvation Canyon where he spent most of his time. Rosenthal’s poetry does not recount his experience in detail; it is not replete with maps, photographs, and a day-by-day account of his adventures. Instead, we gain an insight into what it means to be truly lost and found, to survive the strangest of desert nights and return to the heart of the city… with a newly found wisdom and zest for life. With an introduction by Ruth Nolan and photos by Maja Trochimczyk, and Ken and Wendy Sims. For more information visit a post about this book on the Moonrise Press Blog.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Ed Rosenthal’s The Desert Hat not only recounts an incredibly vivid story of survival, but maps out the dangerous journeys of the heart and the imagination in that hallucinatory place between mind and body, between nature and man, between the past and the future. Like poet James Wright, Rosenthal ”goes/ Back to the broken ground” of the self and finds a stranger there trapped in the cosmology of an endless, unpitying desert. As the stark “sun burns holes/ into the sky” the psyche’s true-north compass finds salvation’s shade. Rosenthal climbed out of “the busted monster’s mouth” with a beautiful, moving book.   

     ~ Elena Karina Byrne,  Executive Director of AVK Arts 

In "The Desert Hat," Los Angeles poet/real estate broker Ed Rosenthal presents the mythopoetic journey through his real-life experience of being lost for 6 days in remote canyons of the Mojave Desert's Joshua Tree National Park in September, 2010. "The Desert Hat" delves deeply into the wildest and unpredictable heart of the Mojave into a storied landscape that Rosenthal renders as both recognizable to the reader and also deeply specific to his solitary and unanticipated experience, and in these poems, creates an empathetic and spiritually-affirming desert landscape that resonates within all of our desert hearts.   

~ Ruth Nolan,  Professor of English @ College of the Desert 

Gardens of the Earth by Margaret Saine

Published in September 2018 in BW and color paperback formats, 
as well as an ebook, in E-Pub format. 

ISBN 978-1-945938-25-2 (paperback), $18.00

ISBN 978-1-945938-26-9 (color  paperback), $40.00
ISBN 978-1-9459382-7-6, EBook, $10.00

http://www.lulu.com/shop/margaret-saine/gardens-of-the-earth-according-to-nature/ebook/product-23799469.html

More information: http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/09/announcing-new-poetry-volume-by.html​.  

"Gardens of the Earth: According to Nature" by Margaret Saine is a poetic exploration of nature tamed and shaped by humans, nature that in turn shapes the gardeners and gives them a purpose, a cause for action, and a reason for reflection.  Saine's inspired trip to the garden includes the seasons, rain and sunlight, multi-colored blossoms, and lots of birds. She shares her delight in gardens and gardening with a host of contemporary poets and friends and the renowned gardeners of the past. The book includes a separate section on trees, and is richly illustrated by Saine's own photographs, with the characteristic interplay of light and shadow, clouds and mists. Certain poems are translated into French, German, and Italian. 

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Gardens, as always in poetry, are pretexts. In this new book, Margaret Saine attempts to reveal to us, simply and purely, their mystery. Nature and poetry are unified in a symbiotic song of life. “Gardens of the Earth” is a peaceful symphony of beauty that pulses with the chords of human existence: the garden as metaphor of our condition of transient beings on this earth.      ~ Eliécer Almaguer

The growing of plants, their enticing being explained by a kind gardener aunt to a lonely girl. Plants, flowers, paragons of life, as recipients and keepers of personal memories. Plants, trees of the world, here seen with the oceans, as giving breath, oxygen, to human beings. And plants, reciprocally breathing the carbon dioxide humans exhale: a true terrestrial symbiosis.       ~ Sibilla De’Salici

When the trees forget /that I am there/ have truly arrived/ in their midst, says Margaret Saine.  And so I felt, reading Saine’s latest book, “Gardens of Earth”, that I had arrived in the midst of poems, as unselfconscious as the trees she inhabits. How does a poet bring a reader into the middle of gardens without becoming precious or mundane?  Saine invites us with her natural rhythm, color and the interweaving of several languages, enveloping us completely in beauty before we know what has happened to us. The poet reminds us that we are spirits, that this garden, as she says, is our entrance into matter, l’entrata in materia. If paintings could be poems or poems paintings, this book would be the avatar.

        ~ Alice Pero, author of “Thawed Stars”, founder of Moonday Reading Series  and Windsong Players Chamber Ensemble


Margaret Saine’s Gardens of the Earth is an exceptional exploration of gardens not only as a small patch of land that bring gardeners peace, but as part of a larger biosphere, connected forever to the larger world. She might start in a plot of land on the earth, but her poetry reaches out to discuss the atmosphere, an encroaching urban world, and life and death itself. Her microcosm explores the macrocosm of this world.

 ~ John Brantingham, Professor of English, Mount San Antonio College