ISBN 978-1-945938-40-5 (eBook, ePub), $10
ISBN 978-1-945938-40-5 (eBook, ePub), $10
ABOUT THIS BOOK
"This anthology is a treasure and I'm honored to be part of it! Over the last ten years, the Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga, along with the faithful support of the Little Landers Historical Society and the McGroarty Arts Center, provided a place, not only for local poets to gather, but for poets from well beyond our town to come together as a community and enjoy conversation and share their work. This anthology is a wonderful tribute to all who participated over the years."
~ Dorothy Skiles, Seventh Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga
"This is a lovely anthology, my fellow Americans! We are all Village Poets, in one way or another. And we are all Little Landers, also called “los terrenitos,” the utopian colony of collective agriculture established in and around Bolton Hall Museum in the early 20th century. Let us cultivate our poetic land!"
~ Margaret Saine, author of Lit Angels and Gardens of the World (Moonrise Press)
"The busy poetry circles of mountain communities cohabiting the threatened southern rim of our forests, has produced a series, celebrated in this gorgeous anthology which artfully embraces power of place. These are the precious words of lyrical poets from everywhere, who joined the Valley Poets inside the halls of the pioneer settlers of Tujunga, joining in a decades-long tribute to and embodiment of the democratic community practices of the founding ancestors, gathered within the walls of monumental Bolton Hall."
~ Ed Rosenthal, survivor www.poetbroker.com
Preface
With this anthology of 80 poets, we celebrate the tenth anniversary of Village Poets Monthly Readings, held since 2010 at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga. We also have occasional visits to the McGroarty Arts Center, a former home of the California Poet-Laureate in 1933-1944, John Steven McGroarty. His Poet-Laureate title inspired our local Poet-Laureate program, initiated in 1999, when one of us (Marlene Hitt) became the First Poet-Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. The other editor (Maja Trochimczyk) was the Sixth and we just selected our Tenth, Alice Pero.
A variety of public poetry readings, festivals and events followed, and the Village Poets Monthly Readings have been established as a result. You can read about the history of our readings further on.
Here, we would like to express our profound appreciation to all the poets who presented their work at the readings, both as featured and guest poets. We are also grateful to all the musicians and artists, who enriched our events with their talents, and to the entire Sunland-Tujunga community. Little Landers Historical Society allows us to use Bolton Hall Museum every month. The McGroarty Arts Center welcomes us every two years or so for our “Passing of the Laurels” ceremonies. Sunland-Tujunga Neighbor-hood Council offers financial support for some of our events.
We, the editors, are especially grateful to all volunteers who have made the Village Poets Monthly Readings possible: Lloyd Hitt, Bill Skiles, and other Poets-Laureate: Dorothy Skiles (the “president” and spiritus movens of our group), Joe DeCenzo, Elsa Samkow-Frausto, and Pamela Shea. Together, we have created something worthwhile, something lasting. Enjoy!
Maja Trochimczyk and Marlene Hitt
Preface – vii
Table of Contents - viii
Poetry in the Foothills – A Look Back - x
Listing of Featured Poets and Artists – xii
Part 1. Featured and Guest Poets - 1
Lidia Abramian (Lulu) - 3
Be Me – 3
Rite of Passage – 4
Ancestor Love Dance – 4
Millicent Borges Accardi – 5
Over Broken Bottles and Rivers – 5
And Rage – A Pot of Orchids You Loved – 6
Mourning Doves – 7
Sharon Alexander – 8
Wheatfield with Crows – 8
My Name Was Once an Argument - 9
Eli̩cer Almaguer Р10
Acupuncturas – 10
Acupunctures, transl. Margaret Saine – 11
Christopher Askew – 12
There is a Place – 12
Moments – 13
Beth Baird – 14
This Table – 14
Ode to a Temporary Relationship – 15
Judy Barrat – 16
Remembering the Daisy Days – 16
Cile Borman – 18
The Weekend – 18
What is the Blues – 19
Madeleine Swift Butcher – 20
What She Carries – 20
Girl from Minneapolis – 21
Elena Karina Byrne – 22
That Van Gogh Was on Drugs Wasn’t Funny – 22
Don Kingfisher Campbell – 23
Showing a DVD on the Galapagos to a Ninth
Grade Class – 23
Curiosity – 24
Ross Canton – 25
“A Noiseless Spider” (Revisited) – 25
Waking to Absence – 26
Gloriana Casey – 27
The Magic of MOM – 27
The Piggy Bank Blessing – 28
Jackie Chou – 29
Ode to Insomniacs – 29
Cerulean – 30
Teresa Mei Chuc – 31
Pencil – 31
Jeanette Clough – 33
Coloratura – 33
Sky – 34
Beverly M. Collins – 35
Dragon – 35
Some Bridges – 36
Brendan Constantine – 37
Anonymous – 37
Difficult Listening Time – 38
Bill Cushing – 39
Pelicans – 39
Dispatches – 39
A Former Life – 40
Marsha De La O – 41
Summer – 41
Peggy Dobreer – 42
Exquisite Harmonics – 42
Linda Dove – 44
Fear Is the Key to Every Map, Every Eye - 44
Alexis Rhone Fancher – 45
Overdose – 45
Cruel Choices – 46
Mary Fitzpatrick – 47
Basho’s Death – 47
Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity – 48
Michael C. Ford – 49
A Get-Well Card – 49
Joyce Futa – 50
Her Death – 50
Kumquat Marmalade – 51
William Scott Galasso – 52
Halcyon Days – 52
May day manna (tanka) – 53
Twenty-twenty (haiku) – 53
One breath (haiku) – 53
Jerry Garcia – 54
While Walking the Dog Last Evening – 54
John Guzlowski – 55
Refugees – 55
Thanksgiving Day Poem – 56
Charles Harmon – 57
The Joy of Cooking – 57
Lloyd Hitt – 59
A Shadow – 59
Curiosity – 60
Our Journey – 61
Lois P. Jones – 62
Red Horse – 62
Georgia Jones-Davis – 63
Monumental Dog – 63
After the Storm – 64
C.E. Jordan – 65
possum garden – 65
Mandy Kahn – 67
The Tour Guide – 67
The Everyday – 68
Mina Kirby – 69
When I Was Me – 69
A Special Place – 71
Andrew Kolo – 72
America of An Immigrant – 72
Dinosaur – 72
Garden of Eden – 73
Deborah P Kolodji – 74
white marble (haiku) – 74
floating purple (haiku) – 74
highway (haiku) – 74
settling the estate (haiku) – 74
the scarf (haiku) – 74
morning tidepools (haiku) - 74
winter sea (haiku) – 75
a caterpillar's progress (haiku) – 75
moon flower (haiku) – 75
LA traffic (haiku) – 75
our history (haiku) – 75
Mariko Kitakubo – 76
Borderless Prayer (tanka sequence) – 76
Sharmagne Leland-St. John – 78
Bruna Vieira gathers flowers – 78
She Dreams – 79
James Levin – 80
A.M. Ride – 80
Wayne Allen LeVine – 81
No Way Back – 81
Only This – 82
Stephen Lindsteadt – 83
Saint-R̩my de Provence Р83
Elline Lipkin – 84
My Parents Meet at La Grande Place – 84
Limoncello – 85
B.D. Love – 86
Declan IV – 86
Rick Lupert – 87
Heat – 87
Animal Hospitality – 88
Radomir Luza – 89
Tall Oak Trees with Gray, Flowing Moss – 89
Suzanne Lummis – 91
Flour, Eggs, Milk, Baking Powder, Salt and God – 91
Answer Like the House Burning Down – 93
Not There – 95
Shahe Mankerian – 96
Writer's Block at Father's Grocery Store – 96
Mirjana N. Radovanov Matarić – 97
Land of Canyons and Arches – 97
Oxymoron – 98
Maria Elena B. Mahler – 99
La Machi – 99
Gabriel Meyer – 100
A Harvest of Springs Struck by Lightning – 100
Still Life, With Lilacs – 101
Naia – 102
Songbird (haiku) – 102
new love . . . (haiku) – 102
in those moments (haiku) – 102
the way his lips linger (haiku) – 102
Ghosts Among the Cornflowers – 103
Toti O’Brien – 104
Of the Palm – 104
Albino – 105
Cece Peri – 106
Trouble Down the Road –106
Who Says Bodhisattvas Can’t Have Fun? – 107
A.R. Peterson – 108
Poem for Augustine – 108
The Light That Fails – 109
Thelma T. Reyna – 110
The Broken Heart Syndrome – 110
This is How Grief Goes – 111
Cindy Rinne – 112
Places I Belong When the World is Upside Down – 112
The Land Owns Me – 113
Susan Rogers – 114
Longing for October – 114
Gratitude – 115
Sharon Rizk – 116
Coming Up for Air – 116
Ed Rosenthal – 118
The Digger – 118
Mary Kay Rummel – 120
Burnt Dress – 120
California Morning Song – 121
Sonya Sabanac – 122
In that Banat Land – 122
Margaret Saine – 124
Interlude 1900 – 124
Awakening – 125
Shaymaa – 126
Discover – 126
Wild Life – 127
Param Sharma – 128
Government Memorandum – 128
Rick Smith – 130
St. Germaine District, Paris, 1949 – 130
Kathi Stafford – 131
Near Belur Temple – 131
Ripe Moon – 132
Julia Stein – 133
After the Fire Storm – 133
Melissa Studdard – 134
Inside the beige brick house, the beige rooms – 134
My Kind – 135
Konrad Tademar Wilk – 136
The Grace of a Great Dame – 136
In Nonsymmetric, Entropic Gravitation – 137
Ambika Talwar – 138
Quantum of Your Gaze – 138
Love the Rain! – 139
Judith Terzi – 140
Ode to Malala Yousafzai – 140
Nostalgia – 141
Bory Thach – 142
In the Moonlit Night – 142
Lost Tribe – 143
G. Murray Thomas – 144
“Your Kidney Just Arrived at Lax” – 144
Mary Torregrossa – 145
The Promise of Snow – 145
Yun Wang – 147
Futurescape – 147
Spring – 148
Mari Werner – 149
Joshua Trees – 149
From the third planet orbiting the yellow dwarf star 27,000 light-years from the center of the 97-billionth galaxy – 150
Measuring – 151
Kath Abela Wilson – 152
Childhood Wisdom – 152
Clear summer evening (tanka) – 152
Like a painting (tanka) – 152
Now a Garden – 153
What grows – 154
Mariano Zaro – 155
Synapse – 155
Part 2. Poets Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga - 157
Biography – 159
Just California – 160
Marlene Hitt – 161
Biography – 161
Arrival – 162
Innocence – 163
Enlightenment – 164
Prescription – 164
Ancestors – 165
The Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day – 166
Love Mended – 167
The Remembering – 168
Katerina Canyon – 170
Biography– 170
Feet – 171
Why Write? – 173
The Color of Their Skin is What Defines Most People,
so Barren – 175
“O” – 175
Material Value – 176
Penance – 177
A Cento for Poe – 178
Joe DeCenzo – 179
Biography – 179
Ordinary Rose – 180
Conversing with Shadows – 181
Barely Dressed – 183
Flowers – 184
My Companion in Free Fall – 186
For a Friend–187
Biography – 188
Sunland– 189
This Smaller Murder – 191
Details – 192
The Carter Variations – 193
To the Daughter I Didn’t Have – 195
Biography – 197
The Summer Has Fled – 198
Twelve – 199
Driftwood Heart – 202
Improvements – 201
The Blossoms of the Night-Blooming Cereus – 202
Time for Rest - 203
Biography – 204
What I Love in Sunland – 205
Dragonfly Days – 206
Sapphire – 208
Arbor Cosmica – 209
June in Gold and Blue – 210
Imagine – A Poem of Light – 211
Dorothy Skiles – 212
Biography – 212
Taking the Old Road – 213
Yesterday’s Roses – 214
Winds – 215
Portland’s Fog – 215
The Scourge of 2020 – 216
The Coyote’s Howl – 217
Deep in My Dreams – 218
Elsa Samkow-Frausto – 219
Biography – 219
Going – 220
Late into the Night – 220
Here, Alive & Awake – 221
I No Longer Question I’m a Poet – 221
Long Math (for Ander) – 222
I Offer You a Moratorium on Race - 224
Pamela Shea – 225
Biography – 225
Glowing Girl – 226
Eulogy for Night – 227
Garden Visit – 228
Lake Tahoe Vacations – 228
Escondido – 229
Rosebuds and Lovers – 230
Supermoon – 231
Wash Wonderland – 232
Alice Pero – 233
Biography – 233
Old Oak of Sunland/Tujunga Library – 234
The Day of Nothing – 236
Barter – 237
Green by Water on St. Patrick’s
Day, Sunland – 238
Rumors – 239
Village Poets with Marlene and Lloyd Hitt - Lifetime Achievement Award, July 202019 Standing: Joe DeCenzo, Pamela Shea, Elsa Frausto, Dorothy Skiles. Seated: Maja Trochimczyk, Marlene Hitt, Lloyd Hitt, Josephine