Poets Hitt, Mataric, and Pero About "Grateful Conversations" Anthology. November 25 Reading

"Grateful Conversations, edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford, brings to its readers a wealth of women's wisdom and talent.  This beautiful book contains poetic self-portraits of nine poets that form the Westside Women Writers group.  The poets selected their own favorite poems that represent their worldviews and experiences; they also provided illustrations - photos of nature and families. A large portion of the volume is dedicated to verse based on shared themes, prompts, or site-visits to museums.  Wisdom comes with age, and all nine poets featured in this anthology are over 50 years old so they have lived through a lot.  While I feel compassionate towards the tragedies they describe, both personal and of others, I particularly like poems about family, the little blessings of daily life that are too often overlooked and should be cherished, with gratitude and grace. Rarely can one find in one place so many deeply moving and inspired poems, about the traumas of the past, the gifts to be cherished in the present, and hopes for a bright future."

             ~ Marlene Hitt,  author of Clocks and Water Drops  (Moonrise Press, 2015)

"I highly recommend "Grateful Conversations" for every library and poetry class. This anthology, edited by Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, a Polish American scholar and poet, and Ms. Kathi Stafford, an attorney and poet, presents work by Westside Women Writers, a group of nine poets that meet every month to share poems, encourage and learn from each other. As a poetry teacher, I know how important such feedback is, and I appreciate seeing in print the proof of this work in the form of workshop poems written after site visits to local museums. As a Serbian American poet and writer, I'm also very pleased to see the work of my former poetry student, Sonya Sabanac, featured so prominently in this anthology, especially her poems about our war-torn homeland and the trauma of displacement as an emigrant. I am also very happy to read the poems of Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, whose work I have known and appreciated for many years. These two fellow Slavic authors are joined in the anthology by poets with roots in California, whose names are well known in the literary circles of America, such as Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portugese American, Ambika Talwar, an Indian American, Lois P. Jones, or Georgia Jones-Davis.  Some of the poets are Jewish, some are Christian, some are spiritual without a religious denomination. All share the women's wisdom and maturity. All share their talents and poetic inspiration for which all readers should be grateful."

              ~ Dr. Mira N. Mataric, Poet, Writer, Translator, and Educator, Pasadena, California

"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

Maja Trochimczyk, Sonya Sabanac and Susan Rogers

PHOTOS FROM NOVEMBER 25, 2018 READING AT BOLTON HALL MUSEUM

Grateful Conversations anthology was represented by Susan Rogers, Sonya Sabanac and Maja Trochimczyk, with a reading focused on the themes of gratitude, personal history, and life wisdom.

Maja Trochimczyk read her "Ode of the Lost" as well as the Lady with an Ermine" and Ciocia Tonia, about the fate of her maternal great aunt, deported to Siberia by Soviets in 1940/

Ciocia Tonia

~ for my Mother’s Aunt, Antonina “Tonia” Glińska, 

   deported by the Soviets to Siberia in 1940

Only a pear tree

between fields of sugar beets and corn.

Ripe pears — that’s all left from the house, 

barn and orchard. The farm where she raised 

her sons, milked her cows, and baked her bread.

Only a pear  tree. A lone memento 

standing forlorn in an August field.

They ploughed it over— the village church and bus stops, 

the neighbors’ corrals, where their horses used to neigh.

They ploughed it over — her garden of herbs 

and cosmos, its fragile lace of leaves kissed 

by sunlight, a dream of a flower, really — 

she used to so love its ephemeral beauty, 

a ghost of the past.

It was the worst, then, to see her neighbors 

running with news — her husband shot 

in the middle of the dusty village road.

No time for grief, she saved her tears for later.

The orders came at once: a day to pack,

a long train ride to an unfamiliar city, 

near a river she never longed to see.

They said, pack wisely — take only

 the warmest clothes, boots, pillows. 

Bring as much food as you can carry. 

Where you are going, there is nothing, 

except for freezing breath 

and bitter cold. 

It is not painful now, just surprising, 

her whole life gone, and only one tree left.

No trace of her ancestral village on the maps.

Only a pear tree 

in an empty field of stubble.

Only a pearl tree 

in her golden field of dreams. 

(c) 2018 by Maja Trochimczyk

Sonya Sabanac read poems about her immigrant experience as a war refugee from Serbia, who left during the Balkan war. Having lost everything and having left her country in a rush to save her life, she made a powerful anti-war statement in a poem that took over 10 years to write.

Susan Rogers presented five of her favorite poems, including perennial favorites, The Origin is One, Grass, and Longing for October, as well as the Grateful Conversations title poem of the entire anthology.

Susan Rogers

Grateful Conversations 


Everything we have we’re given
in love to use in love, in grace.
There is nothing we alone have written.

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

sour and sweet, lemon, raisin
and grain to bind them into place—
There is nothing we alone have written.

We eat cakes but have forgotten
their origin. We have erased
everything. We have; we’re given.

We look. We laugh. We love. We listen.
We welcome gifts we embrace.
Yet there is nothing we alone have written.

Watch sunset turn to a ribbon.
Remember honey and its taste.
Everything we have we’re given.
There is nothing we alone have written.

(c) 2018 by Susan Rogers

Sonya Sabanac

Poets from Nov 25 reading. L to R seated: Sonya Sabanac, Andrew Kolo,

Susan Rogers, Konrad Tademar, Liliana Tademar. Standing: Mira Mataric

Maja Trochimczyk, Joe DeCenzo, Marlene Hitt, Phil Larsen, Pam Shea, and

guitarist Mark Achuff, special guest musician.

Announcing "Clocks and Water Drops" - Poetry Book by Marlene Hitt

Cover with photo by Lloyd Hitt

ISBN 978-0-9819693-5-0 , 116 pages.

Moonrise Press is pleased to announce that the next poetry book in our Women Writers series will be by Marlene Hitt, the first Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, former Museum Director at the Bolton Hall Museum, organizer of readings, community events, editor and author. The book includes 73 poems divided into sections on: Children, Marriages, Portraits, Neighbors, Seasons, Small Things, Passages, and Farewells.  The title captures the poet's fascination with the flow of time, as relentless and powerful as drops of water that can shape rocks and move mountains. 

Marlene Hitt

Marlene Hitt is a Los Angeles poet, writer and retired educator with local history as an avocation. She has served for many years as Archivist, Museum Director and Historian at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga. She is a native Californian and a graduate of Occidental College. She also studied at CSUN, USC, UCLA, Glendale College and Trinity College in Ireland. As a member of the Chupa Rosa Writers of Sunland for nearly 30 years, she has worked with this small group of poets from whom has sprung readings at the local library, the Poet Laureate Program of Sunland-Tujunga, and the currently popular Village Poets.

Marlene Hitt, Photo by Lloyd Hitt

Her poetry received several first place prizes in annual competitions of the Women’s Club, San Fernando Valley, and many awards from the John Steven McGroarty Chapter of the California Chaparral Poets. Her work appeared in Psychopoetica (UK), Chupa Rosa Diaries of the Chupa Rosa Writers, Sunland (2001-2003), Glendale College’s Eclipse anthologies, two Moonrise Press anthologies, Chopin With Cherries (2010) and Meditations on Divine Names (2012), and Sometimes in the Open, a collection of verse by California Poets Laureate. She published Sad with Cinnamon, Mint Leaves, and Bent Grass (all in 2001), as well as Riddle in the Rain with Dorothy Skiles, and a stack of chapbooks for friends and family.

Ms. Hitt, elected Woman of Achievement for year 2001, served a Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga in 1999-2001, at the turn of the century. She has published several books on local history, including Sunland-Tujunga From Village to City (Arcadia, 2000, 2005) based on columns written for the Foothill Leader, Glendale News Press, North Valley Reporter, Sentinel, and Voice of the Village newspapers since 1998. Over the years, she taught in elementary school, worked in a pharmacy, chaired committees, tap-danced, and played English handbells, autoharp and ukulele. She dedicates her successes to her husband, Lloyd, her children and grandchildren, her biggest fans.

About this Book

Clocks and Water Drops is a book of treasured gifts packed in memories and reflections as tasty as homemade bread, fanciful as a rose petal salad and healing as warm camphor oil on a child's skin. Marlene Hitts’ astute and thoughtful voice paints a world as gentle as lamb’s wool and precious as a girl’s first pony. Open this cedar chest of poems, don its knitted socks and prepare to chase the moon through love and time.

~ Jack Cooper

Author, Across My Silence

Marlene Hitt is an attentive poet, an inspired poet. She listens to the sounds of the past, disappearing from our electrified, virtually connected lives:  the “plodding of beetles,” the ticking of the grandfather clock, the tapping of rain on a window sill.  She watches shifting hues in the sky and the mesmerized faces of children “glued” to their TVs; she sees how the children still brighten at the sight of a Christmas tree.  Marlene shows her readers what a life well lived could be; she makes poems from family stories, community celebrations, and discoveries in a back alley. She portrays her grandparents and her children, yet she does not forget her neighbors, the homeless, the lost… Clocks and Water Drops, her first full-length poetry collection, is a gift of “small things” – a gift of remembrance and affection, a whimsical and wise offering of carefully calibrated images and reflections.  We are thankful for the talent of Marlene Hitt, the first Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, a historian of local communities, and a treasure of poetry in the Foothills.

~ Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D.

President, Moonrise Press

California Poppy. Photo by Maja Trochimczyk 

I Can Hear the Plodding of Beetles

 I have heard of silence

deep enough to hurt the ear,

of quiet strong enough to know

the sound of blood rushing

through one’s own body.

There was once in this valley

quiet enough

to made public a whisper.

Murmured conversation

pushed away miles with silence.

At night, owl called.  Coyote

sang her blessing over a meal. 

From a dusty trail, once,

hooves made rhythm 

for a wagon’s wheels,

a duet that entertained mid day.

The old parson sang

“Lord, I’m Comin’ Home”

and the song was heard

clear to the hills and beyond.

The men, tired, dusty, hot

slept outside on their cots.

Their lullabies-- the cough of a friend

from across the valley, a quiet song

sung in a tent, a murmur..

Years have passed. Since then,

new sounds fill the air. 

Jays still squabble, 

small creatures scurry

breaking branches,

avalanching piles of pebbles. 

 But now, so many years present,

is a deafness from new noise.

Hammers tap duets with hand saw,  

A cement truck

pounds on the ready soil,

covering  the death cry

of the horned spine flower.

Roaring, as relentless as waterfall,

cascades from the freeway.

Big-rigs speed.  Families rush,

the weary hurry to quieter shores.

Over a rocky place

below the asphalt of the 210

empty flatbeds thump,

bounce over that stubborn place

where tough globs of granite

lay miles deep

and three inches too high.

This morning, inside the loudness,

I see a cat’s mouth

meowing a silent cry

that forms from my memory.

Heard only in my mind

is the call of mourning dove

and the sigh of breeze.

In my thoughts

I can hear the plodding of beetles.     

(c) by Marlene Hitt

Italian Pine in Sunland Tujunga, Photo by Maja Trochimczyk