Rosenthal and Trochimczyk Read "The Desert Hat" and "Slicing the Bread" in CA and NY

"The Voices of Survivors" 

 Maja Trochimczyk & Ed Rosenthal 

at No-Ho Unbuckled Poetry Readings

Saturday June 6, 2015 at 3:45 p.m.

The Unbuckled Poetry readings hosted by Radomir Luza  are held at T/U Studios, at 3:45 p.m. on the First Saturday of each month. 

The T/U. Studios are located at 10943 Camarillo Street (Behind Odyssey Video) (Off Vineland) at the intersection of Vineland, Camarillo and Lankershim. I will co-feature with Ed Rosenthal, author of "The Desert Hat" published by Moonrise Press in 2014 will co-feature at Unbuckled Poetry on June 6, 2015 starting at 3:45 p.m.

Radomir Vojtech Luza wrote the following description of the event: 
"At this time of despair and disjunction, disrepair and malfunction, it is artists that keep the globe spinning and the universe purring. Without these hardy souls, escape and hibernation would be nothing less than impossible and all but implausible. The day to day concerns and worries stripped bare by craftsmen and experts who entertain, educate, illuminate and inspire. It is artists who maintain the balance in a reality gone haywire and a turquoise orb given to tragedy, turmoil and chaos. Whether writers, actors, musicians, comedians, directors, poets, composers, editors or dancers, the fraternity has no end or beginning, merely a middle. And, as such, life changers and existence alterers each one." 

"Therefore, if you wish to encounter and embrace a crew or den of such magnificent muse manipulators, look no further than the monthly UNBUCKLED: NoHo POETRY reading taking place tomorrow, 6/6/15, at T.U. Studios in North Hollywood with Featured Poets Maja Trochimczyk and Ed Rosenthal. 
At four and a half years, UNBUCKLED is the longest running literary series in North Hollywood. It offers life, love, literature and a family atmosphere that changes the world once every 30 or 31 days." 

MAJA TROCHIMCZYK

"If there is a more meticulous, dedicated and passionate poet than Trochimczyk on the Los Angeles poetry scene, this poet has not met him or her. The Polish butterfly publishes, writes, hosts and features in a dizzying schedule that makes her one of the busiest and most sought after poets in the city.

She will be reading from "Slicing the Bread," a chapbook about her parents and their experiences in WWII. If the book is anything like her past work, we have a painstakingly beautiful piece of art to look for ward to. And, really, who would expect anything less from Trochimczyk. This is Maja's first Feature at UNBUCKLED and Mary and I could not be happier to have her."

Maja Trochimczyk with Ed Rosenthal

ED ROSENTHAL

The collection of poetry is THE DESERT HAT by Ed Rosenthal, and Elena Karina Byrne describes it this way: "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/in to 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."
Rosenthal, who survived alone in the Mojave Desert for six and a half days, is a gifted poet who has never read at UNBUCKLED before, but is thrilled and overjoyed to be making his debut tomorrow.
Ed is also courageous and resourceful. The poet-broker overcame tremendous odds that may have humbled others in escaping the desert. 

OPEN MIKE-Open to all poets, writers, actors, musicians and comedians.
Read your own work or that of someone else. It is alright just to watch as well.

The Palace Poetry Group Presents

Slicing the Bread / Krojenie Chleba 

 A Bilingual Poetry Reading 

by Dr. Maja Trochimczyk

TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 2015, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm.

DeWitt Community Library, DeWitt near Syracuse, NY

3649 Erie Blvd. East, DeWitt, NY 13214
Tel.: (315) 446-3578 www.dewlib.org

Dr. Maja Trochimczyk at Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural, Sylmar, February 2015.

Photo by Jessica Wilson

Slicing the Bread. A Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems

 Paperback. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2014, $14 + $2.99 S & H

https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=2149

Slicing the Bread is a unique poetry collection revisits the dark days of World War II and the post-war occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union that “liberated” the country from one foreign oppression to replace it with another.  The point of view is that of children, raised by survivors, scarred by war, wary of politics. The poems, each inspired by a single object giving rise to memories like Proust’s madeleine (a spoon, a coat, the smell of incense), are divided into three sections, starting with snapshots of World War II in the Polish Borderlands (Kresy) and in central Poland.

Reflections on the Germans’ brutal killings of Jews and Poles are followed by insights into the way the long shadow of THE war darkened a childhood spent behind the Iron Curtain. For poet Georgia Jones Davis, this book, “brings the experience of war into shocking, immediate focus” through Trochimczyk’s use of “her weapon: Language at its most precise and lyrical, understated and piercingly visual.” According to Pulitzer-Prize nominated poet John Guzlowski, Maja’s “poems about what the Poles suffered both during World War II and The Cold War afterwards are written with the clarity of truth and the fullness of poetry… Here are the stories of how the people she loved experienced hunger and suffering and terror so strong that it defined them and taught her, and teach us, the meaning of family.

Survivors - Readings by Ed Rosenthal and Maja Trochimczyk, Feb - June 2015

We are happy to announce that Maja Trochimczyk and Ed Rosenthal will give joint readings "Voices of Survivors" in February, May and June 2015.  Ed will present his book, based on his experience of having survived more than six days without food and water in the Mojave Desert, called "The Desert Hat" and published by Moonrise Press in 2013. Maja will read from her newest chapbook, "Slicing the Bread. A Children's Survival Manual in 25 Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2014).  

SCHEDULE OF READINGS

Thursday, February 26th, at 7:30 p.m. Ventura Ventura Poets Reading hosted by Phil Taggart “Voices of Survivors” book reading from  “Slicing the Bread” with Ed Rosenthal reading from “A Desert Hat” inspired by being lost and found in the Mojave Desert

E. P. Foster Library, 651 East Main Street, Ventura, CA 93001 Phone (805) 648-2716 

MAY 2015 

Saturday, May 9th, 3 p.m. Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Pasadena, hosted by Don Kingfisher Campbell. Santa Catalina Branch of the Pasadena Public Library.

 999 E. Washington Blvd., Pasadena (east of Lake Blvd).

JUNE 2015 

Saturday, June 6th, at 4 p.m. Unbuckled Poetry in North Hollywood hosted by Radomir Luza. “Voices of Survivors” – a joint reading of Maja Trochimczyk and Ed Rosenthal,   10943 Camarillo Street, North Hollywood, 91602 818-769-1145 

http://www.nohoartsdistrict.com/theatres/arts/theatre-unlimited-t-u-studios/6-unbuckled-poetry 

The Desert Hat

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, California desert poet, writer, editor,conservationist & scholar

 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, author of The Flammable Bird, Masque and Squander

Slicing the Bread

Unwavering in its honesty, Slicing the Bread is a thought-provoking look at a brutal chapter in history: the German Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II.  Trochimczyk gives a public face to this history but also reveals the private heart of a family that endures despite horrific loss.  With simple language and stark imagery, these poems create a powerful testimony and bear witness to the hate that destroys, to the truth that restores, and to the poetic vision that honors our common humanity.

~ Linda Nemec Foster (author of Amber Necklace from Gdansk,  LSU Press; winner of the Creative Arts Award from the Polish American Historical Association)

Maja Trochimczyk’s poems draw you into a bestial, almost inconceivable history. Using objects –bread, potatoes, trapdoors, high heels–she guides you through an experience with the madness of World War II and its aftermath when a dictator is judged worse or better by how many fewer millions he has slaughtered. This book needed to be written. Trochimczyk doesn’t lecture; you are riveted by the power of her poems; their narratives flow from her hands as if a Babcia were still guiding them. And maybe she was. You will remember the taste of this book.
                  ~ Sharon Chmielarz (author of Love from the Yellowstone Trail)

 aja Trochimczyk’s poems about what the Poles suffered both during World War II and The Cold War afterwards are written with the clarity of truth and the fullness of poetry. If you feel that you have heard all there is to hear about those troubled times, you will learn in this book that you haven’t. Her poetic mixing of family narrative and the memories of other survivors feels like the essential stories our own parents told us when they wanted us to know that there were experiences that we must never forget. Here are the stories of how the people she loved experienced hunger and suffering and terror so strong that it defined them and taught her, and teach us, the meaning of family.

            ~ Dr. John Z. Guzlowski, Professor Emeritus, Eastern Illinois University, Pulitzer-Prize-nominated author of Lightning and Ashes about his parents’ experiences in Nazi Germany

Ed Rosenthal - Featured Poet at the Cobalt Cafe, July 22 at 8 pm

Poet- broker and the author of "Desert Hat"  Ed Rosenthal will be featured at the Cobalt Cafe on July 22, 2014, at 8:00 p.m.  The Cafe is located at: 22047 Sherman Way, Canoga Park, CA 91303. Cross street: Topanga Canyon Road (halfway between 101 and 118, the Cafe is to the West of Topanga Canyon Rd)

Ed will read from the "Desert Hat" and a broadside with one of his poems will be available for purchase.  "The Desert Hat" -  a volume of poetry inspired by a six-and-a-half-day ordeal of Ed Rosenthal, a Poet-Broker, who survived alone after being lost in the Mojave Desert in September 2010.  An experienced hiker, he unexpectedly veered far away from his usual route and could not find his way back. He found refuge in Salvation Canyon, was several times missed by search-and-rescue aircraft and helicopters, and finally, miraculously was found by San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputies.

To read more about this book visit: http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-hat-in-desert-hat-by-ed-rosenthal.html. To purchase your copy of the book visit: http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-rosenthal/the-desert-hat/paperback/product-21238943.html 

The weekly reading series at the Cobalt Cafe in Canoga Park, California, hosted since 1994 by Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert. Come by any Tuesday night. The Cobalt opens at 7:30 pm on Tuesdays. The reading starts at 8:00 pm. Sign up for the open reading before 9:00 pm. One drink minimum. (Sodas, bottled water, chips and candy. No Alcohol.) 7 minutes maximum at the microphone. All ages. No content restrictions.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/103686959678211/

The Desert Hat Reading at Bolton Hall Museum, November 24 at 4:30 pm

The next reading from Ed Rosenthal's "The Desert Hat" will take place on Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 4:30 p.m. at the Monthly Village Poets Reading at Bolton Hall Museum. The Bolton Hall, which is the City of Los Angeles's Historical Monument No. 2, is located on 10110 Commerce Avenue in Tujunga, CA 91042.

Read more about this event on Village Poets blog:

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2013/10/ed-rosenthals-desert-hat-and-susan.html


Read an update about Ed Rosenthal's ordeal and survival on Downtown News blog by Jack Skelley with a capsule review of the book:

"Just over three years ago, after making a wrong turn on a hike, Ed Rosenthal, The Poet Broker of Downtown L.A., was lost for 6 days in Joshua Tree National Park. ... The temperature climbed above 100 degrees every day that week. Miraculously, Ed survived. Now, three years later, he has processed the experience. Beautifully. Ed has just published The Desert Hat, Survival Poems (Moonrise Press). And reading it is an astonishing experience in its own right. If Ed has just recounted his dramatic story, that would have been a good read. But Ed is a poet. He gropes for elusive meanings in his transformational desert suffering. Recurring images broaden into symbols, link, and elevate the book into, essentially, one extended poem." ~ Jack Skelley
http://jsprla.com/updates/2013/11/13/surviving-was-a-big-deal-for-downtowns-poet-broker

Ed Rosenthal at Beyond Baroque in Venice - November 10, 2013 at 8 p.m.

The first reading from The Desert Hat by Ed Rosenthal will take place at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice on Sunday, November 10, at 8 p.m.  Beyond Baroque is located on 681 Venice Blvd. in Venice, CA, next to a fire station, with limited street parking. Arrive early to find a spot!

Below is an excerpt from Beyond Baroque's website: www.beyondbaroque.org or
https://www.facebook.com/BBLitArts

DESERT HAT: SURVIVAL POEMS PUBLICATION READING

Lost in a hot, dry, rugged canyon in Joshua Tree National Park for 6 days, with no water and no food, ED ROSENTHAL, a prominent real estate broker and experienced hiker from Culver City, took out a pen and started to write on his hiking hat. Hosted by Ruth Nolan BB tickets: $10, students/seniors $6, BB members - free. Book signing.

The book is now available from Moonrise Press in paperback and eBook formats:

http://moonrisepress.com/desert.html

• Paperback edition,  $15.00 (+S&H), 74 pp.: 
•  ISBN 978-0-9819693-7-4
• eBook for iTunes or Nook, $10.00:
• ISBN 978-0-9819693-9-8

The Hat in The Desert Hat by Ed Rosenthal

Ed Rosenthal in Descanso Gardens, CA, Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

The Desert Hat  is a volume of poetry inspired by a six-and-a-half-day ordeal of Ed Rosenthal, a Poet-Broker, who survived alone after being lost in the Mojave Desert in September 2010.  An experienced hiker, he unexpectedly veered far away from his usual route and could not find his way back. He found refuge in Salvation Canyon, was several times missed by search-and-rescue aircraft and helicopters, and finally, miraculously was found by San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputies.

The wry, surreal, and reflective poems in The Desert Hat: Survival Poems describe the spiritual trajectory of a survivor living through a close encounter with death, starting from alienation in a corporate urban environment and ending with the post-trauma reflections about life and natural environment.

The book consists of 36 poems organized in four sections, reflecting the distinct stages in the spiritual and personal journey, from getting off track, through searching for a way back, hallucination in a hostile desert environment, finding shelter in the shade of Salvation Canyon, being rescued, and experiencing the world after the return from the brink of death.  The title alludes to a canvas hat that Rosenthal used as a notebook and helped the lost poet control his thoughts, capture emotions, and write down his last will and a farewell to his wife and daughter.

The volume is illustrated with photos of the various sections of the famous hat that helped the poet survive his ordeal. He wrote messages to his family, including instructions for the wake and farewells. The photos were taken by Maja Trochimczyk in September 2013 in Descanso Gardens, along with a portrait of the poet-broker, who was wearing his lucky white shirt - it did not even get torn during the six and a half days in the desert.

Here's one of the title poems, The Hat I:

The Hat I

I got to the place out of the sun after a three day search

the first day looking for an exit, the second hiding

under a tree, the third morning of survival

A cold moon follows the blistering vision of day

I went downhill for succor, for a friend to lean against

from sun and night wind

In short-sleeve shirt and shorts I had to hide

under a clamshell rock with a split orange face

till the sun slapped me to wake again

I ran in here to the blessed salvation canyon of shadows

Seeing I would outlive that day’s sun and maybe

only another, I turned my hat to a mirror,

my pen to my blood’s red artery

“My dear wife and daughter, I lost the trail of celebration

of deals. I may never see you, read my wish and will.”

Out in a desert canyon my love poured onto nylon flaps

inside seams and creases as the mirror turned into

a bouquet of pomegranates and apricots

for a circle of friends gathered by the barbecue of stewed tomatoes, candied rice 

with roasted meats and broiled fish at my wake of smoking and carousing,

with the clink of vodka glasses,

per my will, written on my desert hat

to be executed by my beloved 

for my only child.  

__________________________________________________

ABOUT THE DESERT HAT

 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 
California desert poet, writer, editor,conservationist & scholar 

 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 
author of The Flammable Bird, Masque and Squander 

 The “poet-broker” Ed Rosenthal was inspired by surviving alone in the Mojave Desert for six and a half days. 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.

 ~ Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D. 
President, Moonrise Press

_________________________________________________

The Desert Hat

Paperback print edition
ISBN 978-0-9819693-7-4

74 pages, $15.00.

 http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-rosenthal/the-desert-hat/paperback/product-21238943.html

E-Book, $10.00

ISBN  978-0-9819693-9-8  

http://www.lulu.com/shop/ed-rosenthal/the-desert-hat/ebook/product-21239406.html   

Publisher's Spotlight on Lulu.com: 

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/moonrisepress

News about The Desert Hat by Ed Rosenthal

Forthcoming in October 2013 is the wonderful new book by Ed Rosenthal, The Desert Hat. In the words found on the Inlandia Institute's blog, and written by Ruth Nolan, Professor at College of the Desert, and California desert expert, poet, writer, and lover:

 "The story of Rosenthal’s disappearance, and survival, after six days alone in the desert’s harsh September climate was a story a story that riveted Southern California’s attention – as well as the rest of the nation’s – in headlining newspaper and news stories. Like so many others, I anxiously followed the story of his disappearance and the efforts of searchers to find him before it was too late. In addition, as a lifelong, avid back-country Mojave Desert hiker and resident, I was all too aware of the many dangers he faced, especially from exposure and heat. I remember feeling incredibly relieved, and to be honest, surprised, that he had been found alive.

 The story of how Rosenthal was lost, and found, in critical condition but alive, and soon on his way towards making a full recovery, is also a cathartic and transformational one, as rendered here in Desert Hat: Survival Poems in his own words. “The least I could do, after an experience like this, is write a decent book of poems,” he says. Desert Hat: Survival Poems is a unique desert book, even in a body of desert literature filled with life and death stories of those who have faced the southwestern desert’s hostilities.

Stories of getting lost, and barely surviving, are staples of the literature of this remotest and most little known of landscapes. For example, William Lewis Manly’s famous book Death Valley in ’49, which depicts the near-death experience of a party of pioneers who took a wrong turn and barely survived their desert crossing, to the heartbreaking short chapter in Edward Abbey’s celebrated memoir Desert Solitaire, which provides an intimate portrayal of the author’s near-death experience after barely escaping a slot canyon he got trapped in after taking a wrong turn while on a solitary hike.

 Like these other desert books, Rosenthal’s poetry collection is an entry into another world, into a heightened world of self-reflection, of profound revelations, and spiritual enlightenment; his Mojave is a desert world personified and transformed into a universal place. Of the canyon walls he found himself surrounded by, he writes, “Those were friends/Stuck in quartz embraces/Veins of orange eyes smiled.” As he wandered and searched for his car, the desert landscape transformed into a place most extraordinary, leaving an indelible impression, as rendered in another poem: “Ten miles after that turn/The sky was making magic./Turning limbs to ghostly signs/Making a prickly pear look/Like a red shirted hiker.

 These poems are the reader’s entry into the “other world” the author himself entered from the moment on a September day when he realized he was lost. In these highly imagistic poems, we are lead along on this most unusual of journeys, which is both a literal and mythopoetic one that can only be rendered by the Mojave’s mystical and labyrinthine landscape and through Rosenthal’s growing self-awareness and deepening connections with the intimacies of the desert’s private nuances, as seen through his eyes and experienced in his imagination during the time he was lost."

Ed Rosenthal (a couple of years earlier)

 Reprinted from Inlandia Institute's blog: http://localauthors.pe.com/uncategorized/the-desert-hat-survival-poems-a-true-story-of-being-lost-and-found-in-joshua-tree/

The foreward to Ed Rosenthal's new book of poetry inspired by his misadventure in the Mojave Desert, was written by Ruth Nolan, Professor of English @ College of the Desert, California desert poet, writer, editor, conservationist & scholar. Ruth is the editor of No Place for a Puritan: the literature of CA's deserts (Heyday 2009), a critically acclaimed anthology. She is also an active member of desert conservation groups, and the literary force in the landscape of the desert. Her writings are on her blog, http://ruthnolan.blogspot.com

Announcing Ed Rosenthal's The Desert Hat - Survival Poems after Being Lost in the Mojave

Moonrise Press's next publication will be a volume of poetry inspired by a six-and-a-half-day ordeal of Ed Rosenthal, a Poet-Broker, who survived alone after being lost in the Mojave Desert in September 2010.  An experienced hiker, he unexpectedly veered far away from his usual route and could not find his way back. He found refuge in Salvation Canyon, was several times missed by search-and-rescue aircraft and helicopters, and finally, miraculously was found by San Bernardino Sheriff's Deputies.

The wry, surreal, and reflective poems in The Desert Hat: Survival Poems describe the spiritual trajectory of a survivor living through a close encounter with death, starting from alienation in a corporate urban environment and ending with the post-trauma reflections about life and natural environment.

The book consists of over 30 poems organized in four sections, reflecting the distinct stages in the spiritual and personal journey, from getting off track, through searching for a way back, hallucination in a hostile desert environment, finding shelter in the shade of Salvation Canyon, being rescued, and experiencing the world after the return from the brink of death.  The title alludes to a canvas hat that Rosenthal used as a notebook and helped the lost poet control his thoughts, capture emotions, and write down his last will and a farewell to his wife and daugther.

This is Ed Rosenthal's first book-length publication. Forthcoming in 2013.

______________________________________________________________

From a review of  Meditations on Divine Names published online on Deacon's Blog in August 2012.

"The poets belong to different religions or religious denominations. They see the manifestations of the divine in many aspects of life – personal prayer, religious ceremonies, singing of psalms, family relationships, nature, sun, sky, bread making, loving, and love making. They admire the colors of the sky and the liquid nourishment of water. The clarity of mountain air and the gentleness of human touch. From the four letters of YHWH to Lada or Pele, the anthology catalogs some unusual divine names. Poets reflect on the act of naming, the facts of knowing and unknowing of our God(s). They give testimony to their hopes and beliefs, and share what they find beautiful and inspirational, or, sometimes, disturbing. There is darkness around and death, but the poets look for ways to ascend above, to illumination."

Deacon Jim on the Deacon's Blog, August 2012.