Announcing the Publication of "Mud in Magic" by Beverly M. Collins

Moonrise Press is pleased to announce the publication of "Mud in Magic" by Beverly M. Collins, in June 2015.

ISBN  978-0-9963981-0-7 (paperback), $15.00 plus S&H, 96 pages.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/beverly-m-collins/mud-in-magic/paperback/product-22216693.html

ISBN 978-0-9963981-1-4 (e-book, E-Pub format), $8.00
http://www.lulu.com/shop/beverly-m-collins/mud-in-magic/ebook/product-22172374.html


Beverly M. Collins’s "Mud in Magic" is her second poetry book, filled with the wisdom of experience, Her skillful and often aphoristic or narrative poems portray a scene or a character that we could encounter on our streets, in our cafes. The poems are organized into three parts: Thought Bistro (Part I), Tinder Flames (Part II), and Elixir Café (Part III). The beauty and wonder of daily life fill these pages and delight the readers. Beverly M. Collins is fourth in a family of five daughters. Although born in Milford, Delaware, Bev is a Jersey-girl to the bone. She is also a graduate of Taylor Business Institute, a great admirer of Art who carries a deep appreciation and respect for other Artists. As a singer, Collins is a former national finalist for Talent America. As a poet, she is one of three 2012 prize winners for the California State Poetry Society whose works appear in a growing number of publications.

Beverly M. Collins

Beverly M. Collins is fourth in a family of five daughters. Although born in Milford, Delaware, Bev is a Jersey-girl to the bone. She is also a graduate of Taylor Business Institute, a great admirer of Art who carries a deep appreciation and respect for other Artist.

As a singer, Collins is a former national finalist for Talent America. As a poet, she is one of three 2012 prize winners for the California State Poetry Society whose works appear in a growing number of publications. She is the author of Quiet Observations and of Mud in Magic (Moonrise Press, 2015).

At home with her younger family members, she is Auntie Bev. The one who loves to cook, laugh and watch movies, enjoys amusement parks and the peacefulness of a long walk. She loves the sound of great guitar solos and times spent in complete silence where thoughts reign ...

ABOUT "MUD IN MAGIC"

Beverly M. Collins' poetry is much like her: Courageous, wise and imaginative. It is a thunder clap in the middle of Manhattan, a bolt of lightning on a desert island off of Spain. But in the end, it is its power, rhythm and clarity that make it rise to the level of art. Miss it at your own risk.
~ Radomir Vojtech Luza
Poet Laureate of North Hollywood
Pushcart Prize Nominee

Beverly M. Collins writes poetry that is a celebration of woman. She takes everyday experiences however varied and transforms them into a serene acceptance which is emotionally extremely fulfilling. Beverly M. Collins' (her) poems are gems of rare understanding.
~ Mary A. Mann
Author, www.maryanneetamann.com

Beverly M. Collins’s Mud in Magic is her second poetry book, filled with wisdom of experience, wisdom that has grown from a life well lived. Beverly’s skillful and often aphoristic or narrative poems portray a scene or a character that we could encounter on our streets, in our cafes. In these poems, styled as messages and postcards from the Thought Bistro (Part I) and Elixir Café (Part III), there is light and love – the latter, in its many reincarnations, from the affectionate to wistful, to, again, humorous – is also the subject of the central part of the book, Tinder Flames. In vain you would search here for empty fireworks of verbal displays. The beauty and wonder of daily life fills the pages andwill delight the readers.
~ Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D.
President, Moonrise Press

MUD IN MAGIC

It is to spend time on a funky junction,

overlook the “how” and become

“I don’t know.” It is to wear an early-bird

coat with full feathers when the entire

event is late. It is to find that one has tricked

the trickster, turned the tables on the

bait-and-switcher...and got a free ticket.

It is to take life too serious. Put the squeeze

on what is not right-for-you, feel it sting

the palm of your hand like a bumble bee

on the blind side of an apple...but win the bushel.

Mud in magic can be welcome, as “loud”

at the library, “quiet” at an amusement park,

fun as a root canal one day before the feast.

It can murk up the view of a clear day then dry

quickly. It is the oment a way with words does

not win one a way with other things wanted.

It is to select a fall-from-grace, show that taste

buds are dull or absent from the mouth altogether.

It is to be drunk on foolishness, shame one’s way

up the side of the nearest mountain, then watch

the seeds evolve into practical moves.

Proof in the face, some stumble and win the race

one  foot behind the other; however triumphant 

or tragic. The low-down on high-life appears

that dry desert has hidden moisture

and there are obvious bits of mud in magic.

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.

Moonrise Press Publishes "Clocks and Water Drops" by Marlene Hitt

Moonrise Press is proud to announce the publication of

CLOCKS AND WATER DROPS by MARLENE HITT

ISBN 978-0-9819693-5-0, 118 pages, $15.00, paperback

Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 11 April 2015
Distributed by lulu.com

The first reading will take place at Bolton Hall Museum, in Tujunga
on May 24, 2015, 4:30pm. villagepoets.blogspot.com

Clocks and Water Drops is the first full-length collection of poetry by Marlene Hitt, the first Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, a former Director at the Bolton Hall Museum, a local historian, poet, and community activist. The book of reflections about her life, family and neighborhood changing through the decades, includes 73 poems in sections dedicated to: 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. Poet Jack Cooper praises Hitt’s “astute and thoughtful voice” while Kath Abela Wilson admires her “confident and consistent phrasing, and exacting vision.”

Marlene Hitt at Pasadena Lit Fest, 2016.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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, 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.

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 as 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.

You can find out more about her in a wonderful interview with Kath Abela Wilson on ColoradoBoulevard.net: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-the-artist-marlene-hitt/

Threaded Thoughts

Around this hand I wind
a yellow quilting thread
thick and strong
over and over, back onto itself;
Around my hand goes
the Bad Man thread;
with scissors I cut him out.
Mr. Barker’s store 
when I stole a pin,
I tie in a knot.
Tommy, whose thread 
had snapped, whose death
changed the world.
Through my heart
winds a thread around kindness 
and a doll from a stranger, one with
eyes that closed and real hair.
Around and around I wind
the men in the drug store
who teased this child,
I tie them tight, choking them
below their lidded eyes.
Around and around their 
smoke rings, cigarette burns 
on the tables, smoke
blown into the eyes 
of little girls sent to buy
“Wings, two packs for a quarter”
as they clutched their father’s coin 
or ration stamps for their mothers 
who yearned for sugar, butter. 
Around my hand, thread, 
thick like a tumorous growth, 
thread so many-colored 
as to turn brown with the winding
into the brown of your eyes, 
you, who saved me from one world 
to place me into another
where we dragged ourselves
dreaming about bright kingdoms
and robes of kings.
One fine day the needle, threaded, 
pierced my flesh. I bleed 
easily and long, spill red 
onto the thread around my hand, 
the honest cotton through my heart 
and around my arms. 
With the threads knotted 
and frayed I stitch my words 
for you to see.

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

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 Hitt’s astute and thoughtful voice paints a world as gentle as lamb’s wool and precious as a girl’s fisrt 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 a poet beyond measure… she holds each thing to her eye and finds inner correspondences. She finds in the mind- an empty glue a “back alley” and wonders what words to write, as we all do, on a blank page, or “the bronze grave marker” she buys for herself. Each of her poems works on several levels, and almost always ends with a very interesting surprise or revelation. The significance of each detail is stunning and inspiring. She sees objects as possessing uncanny power. She recalls her feeling that the clock pendulum in the house has captured time with its sound, and stolen it from her own grandmother. By her confident and consistent phrasing and exacting vision, she follows her own life from early childhood to now. She calls upon us as readers to look at her life, and back into our own for the metaphors inherent and active… alive, in all of us today.” 

~ Kath Abela Wilson

Poet Artist, founder of Poets on Site

“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 tapp8ing of rain on the windowsill.  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 the Christmas tree. Marlene shows her readers what a life well lived could be; she makes her poems from family stories, community celebrations and discoveries in the 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

TO ORDER YOUR COPY VISIT:

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

MORE INFORMATION:

Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D.

President, Moonrise Press

818 384 8944

maja@moonrisepress.com

www.moonrisepress.com

Books and Readings in Progress this Spring

NEW POETRY BOOKS BY MARLENE HITT AND BEVERLY COLLINS

Marlene Hitt, Photo by Lloyd Hitt

Moonrise Press will publish two poetry books this spring - "Clocks and Water Drops" by Marlene Hitt, now in the final proof stage, and as yet untitled project by Beverly Collins, with the editorial process just starting.

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. Her book will feature 74 poems filled with a richness of reflection about life and beauty. 

Beverly M. Collins

Beverly M. Collins grew up in Westfield, New Jersey, loves amusement parks, music and traveling. Collins applies lessons she learned from Songwriter Guild of America and the National Association of Record Industry Professionals to her poetry. She is the author of the book, Quiet Observations, and one of the 2012 prize winners for the California State Poetry Society. Her work has appeared in the California Quarterly, Poetry Speaks! Year of Great Poems and Poets Calendar. (Sourcebooks, Inc.). Beverly Collins often attends many readings around town, has worked with "Poets on Site" and has featured at the Cobalt Cafe, The Talking Stick, "Unbuckled" NoHo Poetry. She is a regular at Barnes and Noble Burbank monthly readings, as well as at The VillagePoets of Sunland-Tujunga Monthly poetry Reading Series.

MAJA TROCHIMCZYK'S UPCOMING READINGS FROM "SLICING THE BREAD"

Maja Trochimczyk reads "Slicing the Bread" and "What to Carry" poems from the book.
Flintridge Bookstore, January 2015.


MARCH 2015

Sunday, March 15th, at 4-6 p.m. Louis Jane Studio, Pasadena Poets And Verse – An Exploration Of Life’s Journey with Guest Artist: Lynda Pyka, and poets Cindy Rinne, Lois P. Jones, Deborah P. Kolodji, Taoli-Ambika Talwar, Gerda Govine and Kathabela Wilson
Louis Jane Studio, 93 East Union Street, Pasadena, CA 91103, (626) 796-8333
Louisjane.com

APRIL 2015

Sunday, April 5th, at 7pm (Easter Sunday) co-feature at Catcher in the Rye  for the  "Speakeasy Sunday" reading organized by the Los Angeles Poet Society.  10550 Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake, CA 91602 http://www.losangelespoetsociety.org/#!speakeasy-sunday/c8wb


Sunday, April 19th, at 2:00pm Moonday Poetry Hosted by Alice Pero and Lois P. Jones “Woman in Metaphor “Group Reading from an Anthology edited by Maria Elena B. Meyer
Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse, 1010 Foothill Boulevard, La Cañada Flintridge, CA 9101, Phone:(818) 790-0717 www.moondaypoetry.com

Editor, Maria Elena B. Mahler, collected twenty-seven poems from twenty-seven accomplished, published, and award winning poets from different parts of the world. She invited them to write a poem based on one of StephenLinsteadt'spaintings; paintings he created over the last thirty-five years. The book contains an introduction and essay by Lois P. Jones, host of Pacifica Radio’s “Poet’s Café” (KPFK, Los Angeles 90.7 fm), and co-producer of the Moonday poetry reading series in Santa Monica. Lois is a four-time Pushcart nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Tiferet Poetry Prize and the 2012 Liakoura Prize. About this collection of art and poetry, Lois explains:
"When Stephen Linsteadt embarked on his metaphoric journey, he was striving toward a deeper sense of conception. If art implies a desire for the sacred it is, as Eckhart Tolle suggests, a portal or an access point which ultimately leads you to yourself. It is this portal that bids we enter, freely and without agenda. Each of the twenty-seven writers in Woman in Metaphor, all of various ages and beliefs – practiced poets or sensitive observer, transversed this threshold, returning with their own compelling visions."  Read more>> Woman in Metaphor is now available at Natural Healing House Press

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).

Saturday, May 16th, 8 p.m. Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, Venice “Crossing Dark Borders: The Poetry of Shadow, Shade and Long Night.” Lisa Cheby , Georgia Jones-Davis and Maja Trochimczyk celebrate the publication of their new chapbooks. Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Boulevard, Venice, CA 90291 (310) 822-3006 www.beyondbaroque.org

JUNE 2015

Saturday, June 6th, at 4 p.m. Unbuckled Poetry in North Hollywood hosted by Radomir Luza. “Voices of Survivors” – a joint reading with Ed Rosenthal, author of The Desert Hat and survivor of being lost in the Mojave Desert.
10943 Camarillo Street, North Hollywood, 91602 818-769-1145
http://www.nohoartsdistrict.com/theatres/arts/theatre-unlimited-t-u-studios/6-unbuckled-poetry

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK

ISBN-10: 1622296877 ISBN-13: 978-1622296873. Available on Amazon, Finishing Line Press, etc.
Published by Finishing Line Press (December 2014)
https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=2149 http://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2014/07/finishing-line-press-to-publish-slicing.html

DESCRIPTION

This 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. Children experienced the hunger and cold, witnessed the killings, saw the darkening blood spilled on the snow and hands stretching from locked boxcar windows. Some heardthe voices of murdered Jews like “bees in the breeze,” others learned never to throw any food away, because “war is hunger.” 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 onthe Germans’ brutalkillings 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.” A fellow Polish-American poet, Linda Nemec Foster praises the “unwavering honesty” and “stark imagery” of Trochimczyk’s poetry that “bear witness to the hate that destroys, to the truth that restores, and to the poetic vision that honors our common humanity.” The Tieferet Prize winner and Poets-Café host Lois P. Jones points out the “vivid and heartbreaking detail” of poems that “will move you to appreciate the simple privileges and necessities of life.” As Jones wisely observes “It is the duty of the poet to convey story, but it is the art of the poet who can transform our often cruel and brutal history and affect forever, the way we look and listen to the world.” Poet Sharon Chmielarz concurs: “You will remember the taste of this book.”

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

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