"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.