On Heartbreaks, Heart Math, and Finding Hearts

What is a heartbreak? Does a heart really break when a loving relationship dies, or someone really dies and leaves us all alone? California poet, Karineh Mahdessian published an anthology of unhappy love poems by women (including one of mine), and followed it by an anthology of unhappy love poems by men, and is now working on the third anthology of poems written by match pairs, a female and a male poet, that have not met before. The results will be available in a new anthology and we will see where all these heartbreaks take us.

If it is only into whining - "poor me, pity me, my baby left me..." - that's not much of a lesson for the rest of us. "So what..." a bystander could shrug and say, bluntly: "get your act together and find a new love, this is not the end of the world...deal with it..."  But what if it were? What if that unique loving connection of two lovers, their hearts beating in unison, created a higher-level value in the universe, what if stars and galaxies were born of this love?

The Institute of Heart Math tells us that our hearts have so much neurons around them they actually have their own "brains" that are guarding and guiding our bodies, our whole selves, without conscious involvement of the real brain. The rhythm of the heart influences our thinking.

The electromagnetic field created by the heart synchronizes with other hearts and creates a powerful energy field.  The magnetic field of a human heart can be measured several fields from the body. The negative emotions create a chaotic pattern in this field, while positive, calm, loving emotions create a smooth, coherent pattern that leads to wellness. Coherent rhythm of the heart based on positive emotions of happiness, acceptance, love, gratitude, serenity, helps the brain create innovative ideas and make good decisions.

In pursuit of positive energy of the heart, I wrote many blog entries on love, roses, and St. Valentine's Day - and gathered the links on a separate page: Love and Roses.  As a dedicated "love-poetry" writer, I have committed the unforgivable sin, unforgivable, that is, for a professional, academic poet - write about emotion, write about the four-letter word, love... Yet, the proliferation of romance books and country songs tells us something about this "dirty word" that serious academic poets cannot use or reflect about if they want to be taken seriously by other serious academic poems and have their work reviewed in serious academic poetry journals. That is: Love is. Love is a force of life.

No, Love is the force of life. Love is the light of life. Love and Light are intertwined: the more loving you are the more enlightened you become. If you reach true wisdom, you also reach true compassion. It all goes together, intertwined, like the couples of humans melded into angelic creatures of eight limbs floating around in Swedenborg's heaven. The union of opposites, merging compassion into wisdom, love into light.

Before we become any sorts of angels and start floating around in any sort of heaven, there's the earth, the here and now. Here's a multitude of loves to be dealing with: love of mothers, love of fathers, love of children, love of grandparents, romantic love, familial love, compassionate love. Love is the glue that holds society together, from a couple, through family into infinity. We are nothing without love. How then, the all-mighty serious academic poets decided that it is not cool, not appropriate, not done, to be sentimental, to be romantic, to be loving in poetry?

If that's the case, I'd rather be non-serious, non-academic and not-mighty poet. I'd rather write cute little trifles that bring smiles to my readers' faces, that make them say, at the end of the reading sigh, all in unison: aaaahhh... How cute is that! Don't you known that this "aaaahhh" means something good? Better than a chocolate heart? More powerful than a gunshot? This is "heart math" - the focus of thoughts and feelings on the one good thing in this life and in the next: Love. Love itself. Love in us. Love around us. Love.

Kathabela Wilson recently edited a new "Poetry Corner" for the Colorado Boulevard magazine, Reflections on Relationships, and added a fragment of my poem "Adorable" to a set of three reflections on romantic love.  She illustrated her story with two of my "heart" photos - that I have been collecting for quite a while, snapping pictures of various heart-shaped things, from cactus, to spray-painted contours on the sidewalk reproduced above.

Since Kathabela only used a portion of my poem, I thought it would be nice to reprint the whole here, in anticipation of February, the Month of Love.

Adorable

… is the word for you.

Yes, you’ve heard me right.

Like a kitten? More a baby golden lab,

A cuddly puppy with huge chocolate eyes

Looking at me with wild affection.

Excited, impatiently waiting to be hugged.

Adorable – as in the French perfume

“J’adore” – but not the flowery kind,

Rather the musky spice

Of your naked body.

Gentle, shy, hopeful, fit, boisterous, 
Persistent, singing carols out of tune,

With muscles flexing under 
The smooth skin. Ready for the home run.

Nice, not naughty, but nice

Through and through.

How do I know? The word appeared

While I was driving down the Five

At night, dozing off, stopping for naps,

Moving on in a blur of hours, miles,

Hills, exit signs and darkness.

I was rushing to be home

When you called. This word floated up

Through the fog of exhaustion

In the lunar landscape of bare hills

Near Avenal State Prison,

The strange topology of your dreams.

Sensuous, sweet, exotic,
Defiant, witty, bewildering,

Alive, soo alive –

Yes, you’ve heard me right.

I've got just one word for you,

For the whole you –

Adorable

© 2015 by Maja  Trochimczyk  (January 2015)

The Tanka Poets on Site had earlier this month a chance to respond to Kathabela's prompt on "romantic relationships, coupling" - with a beautiful artwork by Susan Dobay.  I wrote another sweet little trifle based on the image of loving bliss that Susan so masterfully captured. 

In the meadow 

sparkling with topaz, 

sapphires and opals

your kiss 

gives me wings

Poetry in Translation from English to Polish

At the Foothills  Poetry Festival on January 10, 2015, I read several poems translated into Polish. Even though Polish is my native tongue, I never write in Polish. Actually, I penned just one Polish verse, about a caterpillar sitting on the window-sill and being sad because it was raining and the caterpillar could not go to the movies. Yes, it was a children's verse. That's it. Somehow, poetry comes to me only in English - I started writing to be able to master English and express every nuance of meaning and emotion. I do have great forerunners in doing that - Joseph Conrad, or rather Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski, who became one of the great stylists of the English language.

In poetry - I was fascinated by bilingual edition of Apollinaire, a French poet of Polish descent. My mom had this book with strange experimental poems, letters scattered across the page, streaming down like droplets of rain. Amazing!  Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) was a French poet and playwright of Polish descent, born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki. He wrote one of the earliest surrealist plays, The Breasts of Tiresias, was founded in WWI and died in the Spanish flu pandemic.

I'm not dead yet, so there's hope I'll become a better Polish-language poet in time. It is a challenge to render one language in another in prose. Poetry is much harder because the melody and rhythm of the language has to be taken into account, not just the meaning.  My first poems that were published in Polish, in an anthology by the Krak Art Group, were translated by others, Konrad Wilk and Liliana Wilk. I translated my own poems for some other publications, such as Poezja Dzisiaj, in Poland - for a set of emigre poetry edited by Anna Maria Mickiewicz of London.  It is really as hard as pulling teeth for me. What I decided to do was to adapt and paraphrase, keeping the overall meaning and making sure that the Polish-language poem actually sounds like a poem and not a complete mess.

Here are some results.

MEMENTO VITAE      


Pomówmy o śmierci.
Twój ostatni oddech
To koniec – a może nie?
Nie wiesz nic.

Mówmy o ostatnim
Dniu. Co byś zrobił
Gdybyś wiedział?
Kogo byś kochał?
Czy szukałbyś swej najmilszej,
Najgłębszej miłości?
A może byś został wśród bliskich
Których dobrze znasz?
Czy okradłbyśkogoś,
Obrabował, obraził?
Czy zacząłbyś rozpaczać?
Wrzucił listy w ogień?
Gdyby kanwa twej przyszłości
Znikła? I zostałby ci tylko
Dzień? Lub godzina?

Mówmy więc o życiu.
Każdy oddech niesie cię
W taniec minut, sekund.
W rytm serca.

Właśnie tak.  


© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk  

MEMENTO VITAE                  


Let's talk about dying.
The gasp of last breath.
The end. Or maybe not,
We don't know.
Let's talk about the last day.
What would you do
if you knew?
Whom would you love?
Would you find your dearest,
most mysterious love?
Or would you just stay
in the circle of your own?
Would you rob, steal
or insult anyone?
Would you cry?
Burn your papers?
If the fabric of your future
shrank to one day,
or maybe just an hour?

Let's talk about living, then.
The next breath,
that will take you
to the next minute,
the next heartbeat.

Just about – now.

© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk
 

O  SZCZĘŚCIU

W domu z witrażami czereśni
usłyszysz jak kot śpi, chrapiąc w komforcie
ręcznie haftowanej poduszki

W domu świeżo ściętych róż
poczujesz jak powietrze zakwita
słodyczą cynamonu i muszkatu

Poczujesz smak miłości
zmieszanej z kroplami deszczu
na patio w mym magicznym domu

Gdzie wszystko, czego dotkniesz,
zmienia się w czyste złoto
szczęścia, które tak dobrze pamiętasz

ON BLISS

In a house of stained-glass cherries
you can hear a cat sleep
snoring into the comfort
of his hand-embroidered pillow.

In a house of fresh-cut roses
you can feel the air bloom
with the sweetness
of cinnamon and nutmeg.

You can taste love
mixed with raindrops
on the patio of my magic house
where everything you touch
changes into pure gold
of bliss, perfectly remembered.


(C) 2006 by Maja Trochimczyk
 

DEFINICJA LITERATURY

Nie chodzi o rozdzielanie zapałki na czworo
Czy liczenie diabłów na okrągłej główce
To wszystko nieważne

Patrz: wschód słońca nad Szczytem Truskawek
I Górą Rozczarowań tańczy na puchatym
Tłuszczyku pierwszych obłoków lata

Zobacz: świetliste linie na płytkim strumieniu
W kanionie błyszczą jak łuski karpia
Czekającego na śmierć w wannie przed Wigilią

Słuchaj: stada wron rozsiadają się na noc
Kanciaste kształty pokrywają czernią gałęzie drzew
Jak klastery, ostre akordy Xenakisa

Widzisz? Wrony kąpią się w rzece, rozciągają
Skrzydła na betonowym nabrzeżu, woda kapie
Dużymi kroplami – one nieświadome, drzemią

Jak wytatuowane, spocone tłumy wakacjuszy
Na zapiaszczonych ręcznikach w Santa Monica ,
Czekające na tsunami, którego nie będzie

Właśnie to jest ważne: spójrz inaczej – nie na siebie
Lecz we wszechświat, nie – na przegrane ambicje
Lecz na miliony gwiazd w galaktykach

Kosmiczne kolizje, wybuchy supernowych
Tysiące niezamieszkałych planet –
Możemy je policzyć, nie możemy dotknąć

Możemy dotknąć, ale nie policzyć
Cieniutkie linie na płatku róży, wyschniętym
w upale pustyni, choć zakwitł dziś rano

Nie o nas tu chodzi – rozejrzyj się dalej
uchwyć co przeminęło, zatrzymaj ziarno czasu
w swej otwartej dłoni – tę iskierkę, chwilę
 

DEFINITION: WRITING

in response to George Jisho Robertson’s essay “Path of Poesis”

It is not like splitting the match in four
or counting devils on its round head –
none of this matters, really

see the sunrise above Strawberry Peak
and Mount Disappointment shimmer
on the puffy underbelly of summer clouds

be dazed by bright ripples on a shallow canyon stream
shining like scales of a carp waiting to be killed
in a bathtub before Polish Easter

listen to the roosting birds at dusk,
the murder of crows covering tree branches
with angular shapes, dense Xenakis chords,

black clusters, dissonant, intense. They bathe
in the river, sit on a concrete bank with wet wings
outstretched, drooping with water, docile

like tattooed crowds resting, sweating
on sandy beach towels in Santa Monica,
waiting for a tsunami that will not come

shifting the gaze is important, from the navel
to cosmos – not how we fail in a multitude of ways,
but what graces hide in galaxies

that collide amidst exploding supernovas,
on thousands of inhabitable planets
we’ll count but never touch –

we’ll touch but never count
the veins on the petals of the rose
shriveling from desert heat, just opened

Not us, then, look around, beyond,
catch what's already gone, hold it
in your hand - the spark, the passing

Maja Trochimczyk © 2012
 

ETIUDA Z CZERESNIAMI



A ja chcę czereśnie
Słodziutkie czereśnie
Chce poczuć ciemne nuty soku
Na mojej skórze
Jak krople deszczowego preludium
W mżawce poranka

W obłoku fortepianu
Wspinam się na czereśnię
Szukam ukojenia wśród kruchych gałęzi
Cieszę się doskonałością czerwieni
Czereśniową muzyką od samego rana

Nasycona, śpiąca
Chowam się w ciemnościach strychu
By łupać orzechy, obierać gorzką skórkę
Odsłaniać biały miąższ
Studium w tonacji C-dur

Smakuję marzenia
Akordy płyną przez szpary
Starych belek wypełnione światłem

To codzienny rytuał mojej babuni
Popołudnie z Chopinem
 

A STUDY WITH CHERRIES

After Etude in C Major, Op. 10, No. 1 and a cherry orchard of
my grandparents, Maria Anna and Stanislaw Wajszczuk



I want a cherry,
a rich, sweet cherry
to sprinkle its dark notes
on my skin, like rainy preludes
drizzling through the air.

Followed by the echoes
of the piano, I climb
a cherry tree to find rest
between fragile branches
and relish the red perfection -
morning cherry music.

Satiated, sleepy,
I hide in the dusty attic.
I crack open the shell
of a walnut to peel
the bitter skin off,
revealing white flesh -
a study in C Major.

Tasted in reverie,
the harmonies seep
through light-filled cracks
between weathered beams
in Grandma's daily ritual
of Chopin at noon.

(c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

Foothills Poetry Festival - Saturday, January 10, 2015 at 3 p.m.

I am honored to represent Polish-American poets at the Foothills Poetry Festival to be held next Saturday, January 10, 2015 at 3 p.m. at the Sunland-Tujunga Public Library, a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Organized by American-Argentinian-Ukrainian Poet, Elsa S. Frausto, Sunland-Tujunga's Poet Laureate, the event will bring poetry in original languages as well as in English in several segments dedicated to distinct countries and immigrant experiences.  The participants will include: Teresa Mei Chuc (Vietnam), Mira Mataric (Serbia), Shahe Mankerian (Armenia) and Elsa Frausto (Argentina) and will be held at 7771 Foothill Blvd., Tujunga 91042.

Poets will also read their favorite "native" poets, in both original and English translations. Refreshments will be served.

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2014/12/international-poetry-festival-january.html

I have not selected my own poems for the reading, but I think I will read something by Czeslaw Milosz and something by Wislawa Szymborska as both poets have had the good luck of having excellent translators. I'll probably find something either written or translated by Stanislaw Baranczak who died recently. My section may also include a poem or two from the "Slicing the Bread" chapbook recently issued by the Finishing Line Press. I will certainly read the elegy in memory of Basia Gawronska, a great artist and a wonderful person. I recently translated it into Polish so it is a bit fresh, but the memory of Basia, who died at Thanksgiving in 2009 deserves this honor.

Wniebowstąpienie

                Dla Basi Kozieł Gawroński in memoriam (1947-2009)

Jeśli pójdziesz ulicą Oro Vista w stronę gór San Gabriel

I spojrzysz w niebo, pomiędzy czerwieniejącymi

Liścmi jesiennej jabłoni, zobaczysz sokoła jak krąży

Nad spalonym zboczem, czarnym kikutem drzewa.

Wyżej, wyżej – kołuje i lotnia, wznosi się po białej

Drabinie obłoków, mierzy błękitny obszar

Niebiańskiej przestrzeni. Samotnie szuka szczęścia

Ponad całym światem, gdzie sokół rysuje kręgi,

polując na myszy.

Gdyby Basia była tu wraz z nami, naszkicowałaby

Zarys ruchu w swym starym notesie – a obok kształt

Klaczy zbiegającej na dół, po błotnistym zboczu.

Jej grzywa powiewa, gładkie ciało błyszczy

Na tle nagiej ziemi, zdeptanej na miazgę

Wygląda jakby była… jest samą wolnością

Zanim nie zatrzyma jej rdzawy łańcuch płotu.

My też rozmarzeni, toniemy w uniesieniach,
Sekretach tkliwości – niech rośnie w ogrodzie

Między ostatnią sałatą i garstką truskawek.

Półkula wiatru przesuwa się nad koronami

Drzew.  Trzepotanie złocistych trójkatów

Porusza granatowe głębie nieznanego nieba.

Rosną gałęzie ginkgo szerząc radość sprzed stuleci.

Basi nie ma. Czymże jesteśmy

Jeśli nie liścmi wyzłoconymi jesienią,
W ostatnich promieniach, przed nocą fioletu?

Dawno temu, gdy dźwięk wiader z mlekiem

Oznajmiał schyłek dnia w polskiej wsi, na dziadków obejściu

Słyszeliśmy echa pogrzebowych dzwonów

Wołających, płaczących – łkanie aż do nieba.

Basi nie ma. Czarna klacz zatrzymuje się

Zadziwiona, zdyszana. Jej grzywa

Wciąż tańczy walca jak fale przypływu.

Spadają liście ginko i jabłoni.

Kręgi sokoła i lotni spotykają się, rozchodzą

Wysoko nad nami, w bieli. Tam obłoki

Otwierają się dla Basi

Aby mogła wejść ze stertą notesów,

Obrazów, przetykanych srebrno-złotą nitką

Znakiem światła, z lusterkami, które potłukła

I dla nas złożyła, byśmy wreszcie dostrzegli, gdzie –

Tu właśnie – jesteśmy.

 Ascension - A Memorial Poem

                                     Basia Koziel Gawrońska in memoriam

If you go down Oro Vista towards the mountains,

and look up between the crape myrtle’s 

reddish leaves, you’ll see a hawk circling 

above charred slopes, blackened gullies.  

Higher, higher, rising to the white stripes

of clouds that measure the blue expanse,

a hang glider flies, looking for happiness,

like the hawk searching for mice.  

If Basia were with us, she’d sketch

the blur of motion in her notebook,

the horse that ran down the muddy slope,

her mane flowing, body shining against the bare 

soil beaten to a pulp. She looks like, she is,

freedom, until the chain-link fence stops her. 

We, too, cherish glimpses of elation,

affection growing in the garden

between strawberries and sage.  

The air cupola shifts above a gingko tree.

The flutter of yellow triangles moves

indigo depths of the sky. Strong

branches spread the joy of centuries. 

Basia’s gone. What are we,

but the leaves turning gold,

catching the last rays of crimson light?

We dance like fireflies at dusk. 

Long ago, when the clanging

of milk pails announced the waning

of the day in a Polish village,

we heard echoes of funereal bells,

calling, ringing out to heaven. 

Basia’s gone. The black mare stops,

bewildered, panting. Her mane

still waltzes like the waves of the tide. 

The gingko leaves fall. The hawk 

and the glider meet and part high up 

where the clouds open for Basia 

to come in with her sketchbooks, paintings, 

her silvery threads of light, and mirrors 

she broke for us to see where we are.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

May the blessing of light be on you—

light without and light within.

May the blessed sunlight shine on you

and warm your heart

till it glows like a great peat fire.

Not that we now know what "a great peat fire" is - 

as we are not Irish and live in the 21st century... 

But, whether we know what we are doing, or not, 

we will "muddle through somehow...." 

to quote another great song... so... 

Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

And once you do, enjoy some Christmas carols, in Polish and English

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo4xJ9iFE-c (Wsrod nocnej ciszy - Poznanskie Slowiki)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtprKo4ibg0 (Gdy sie Chrystus rodzi - Poznanskie Slowiki)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-OXruY5Gx8 (Lulajze Jezuniu - Anna German)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWI-EoTfu20 (Have yourself a very Merry Christmas - Ella Fitzgerald)

ttps://picasaweb.google.com/Maja.Trochimczyk/CaliforniaSeasons2014

Giving Thanks for Poetry and Friends - Kathabela, Lois and Millicent

Reading from Woman in Metaphor with Rick Wilson, Beyond Baroque, Oct. 2014

Thanksgiving is the time of counting your blessings. Gratitude is among the four most important moral virtues that make our lives not just endurable but enjoyable as well. What are the other four? I think they go in pairs: forgiveness and gratitude - we do it for ourselves; compassion and generosity - we do it for others. Or the other way around. . . These are companion values to the Four Cardinal Virtues: Fortitude (Courage) and Moderation, Justice and Prudence (Wisdom).  Four plus four equals eight equals infinity, if seen on the side. But I digress. 

When counting my blessings I decided that the poetry "leaders" in our local poetic circles deserve a lot of praise and gratitude for their selfless devotion to expanding the ever growing poetry spheres links and networks in our corner of the world. I selected three extraordinary poets, extremely talented in their own right, but also motivated to promote others and connect us all into this amazing web of beauty, insight and good will. Their names? Kathabela Wilson, Lois P. Jones and Millicent Borges Accardi. I'll present them in the order we met. I should start with Kathabela. 

KATHABELA WILSON

Kathabela with Maja at the Poets-Artists Exhibition at Scenic Drive Gallery, 2011.

I met Kathabela at a poetry workshop in Sunland, in 2007. I joined her Poets on Site group immediately, after attending poetry workshops in her home, and meeting her amazing mathematician-flautist husband, Rick Wilson. She is the spirit of poetry in the Foothills, of ever growing circles from her home in Pasadena, through Southern California, to the world.  There are so many wonderful poetry things that she has done and continues to do (Tanka, Poets on Site, art, jewelry,  photography, book  and journal editing, poetry salon and workshop hosting, hat wearing, and even dancing), so it is hard to pick just one thing. Thus, I will pick two: 1) a beautiful poem she wrote about Paderewski, the subject of my research projects in music history - for our joint appearance at a conference dedicated to Chopin and Paderewski and held at Loyola College in Chicago, in 2010, and 2) the series of poetry interviews she recently started for the Colorado Boulevard magazine online - that just featured my interview, she beautifully edited to the right size. 

Chopin with Cherries reading in Chicago, 2010, with Sharon Chmielarz

Rick Wilson and Kathabela Wilson in the front row, 

What Paderewski Taught Me About Being

by Kathabela Wilson


good
he tells me
the heart moves

moves like the ocean
sometimes like a mountain
constantly in greeting

his words
my pulse the same
surprises

trembles
holds back
rushes forward

washed always
in silence
silence for what is not

for what has been taken
for what is left
for what has been given

a nation for what is right
the dearly loved
what he always wanted

from the edge
of her seat
a woman leans forward

holds
a breath
time waits

the woman breathes out
whish of wind
essence of man

dark and light
rubato of being
becomes being again

Sharon Hawley, Susan Dobay, Rick and Kathabela Wilson, Pauli Dutton, Erika Wilk and 

Maja Trochimczyk, in the back: Joan Stern, Rick Dutton, Bryan Story, and Just Kibbe, 2012.

KATHABELA'S INTERVIEWS WITH POETS

Her weekly interviews with local area poets and artists appear in the Colorado Boulevard, a magazine created to highlight the local communities of the Foothills.  At http://coloradoboulevard.net/about-us/ you can sign up for their mailing list for announcements and other interesting news and tid-bits. 

The Interviews feature:

• Ron Petite, artist: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-artist-ron-pettie/
• Jean Sudbury,  musician and photographer: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-artist-jean-sudbury/
• Chris Wesley, artist, musician and poet: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-artist-chris-wesley/
• Alice Pero, poet and musician: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-the-artist-with-alice-pero/
• Just Kibbe, poet and artist: http://coloradoboulevard.net/just-kibbe-interview/
• Sharon Hawley, poet and traveler: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-the-artist-with-sharon-hawley/
• Lois P. Jones, poet and photographer: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-the-artist-lois-p-jones/
• Susan Dobay, artist: http://coloradoboulevard.net/susan-dobay-interview/
• Toti O'Brien, artist, musician and poet: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-the-artist-toti-obrien/
• Elsa Frausto, poet: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-artist-elsa-frausto/ 
• Maja Trochimczyk, poet, photographer, music historian and publisher: http://coloradoboulevard.net/mapping-the-artist-maja-trochimczyk/

Kathabela also edits a weekly themed Poetry Corner that will love your comments and features faraway and local poets.   

http://coloradoboulevard.net/loneliness-reflections/

http://coloradoboulevard.net/blood-moon-reflections/

                                 Debbie Kolodji, Rick and Kathabela Wilson, Maja Trochimczyk at the Colonnade Gallery.

Once upon a time, Kathabela appeared in my Tarot Card reading as the Lady of Pentacles, the generous lady of this earth and manifold gifts.  She is truly a magical spirit of generosity, of a creativity that keeps giving, love that keeps flowing to so many. I wrote for her a poem about her hats, and, lo and behold, started to wearing hats myself. She does have that influence on you. You just want to be her! (Not really, with her, you are truly, deeply yourself). And Kathabela would not be the wonderful Kathabela without her astounding mathematician-musician husband, Rick Wilson. Some of my most favorite readings took place with the accompaniment of his amazing flutes. Many, many thanks to you both!

LOIS P. JONES

Maja and Lois P. Jones in KPFK studio, getting ready for the interview in October 2011.

I actually cannot remember when I met Lois; I feel I've known her all my life - as my long lost sister. She is an incredibly talented poet and photographer, and a wonderful, extraordinary person, with wise insights and a warm heart. I do not know whether it was because of that, or in spite of that, my Poets Cafe interview was quite challenging - she is known for asking tough, surprising questions. But on second and third hearing, I realized that Lois created a true, deep, intimate portrait of me as a poet, and as a human being - homesick for a country that exist only in my memory, and longing for what cannot be... 

Lois's  personal list of successes is very long and she is one of the "up and coming" poets, dedicated to her craft. She is equally dedicated to promoting others - as co-host of the famed Moonday poetry readings (with Alice Pero) and of the Poets' Cafe. We tried to form a Spiritual Quartet with Susan Rogers and Taoli-Ambika Talwar, and did some inspired readings together, but, at the end, it did not quite worked out. We are now members of a women's writing group, meeting for monthly workshops and poetry conversations - Westside Women Writers (see below for more on that group).  I'm also happy that Lois contributed to both of my anthologies. Her poem for "Meditations on Divine Names" (Moonrise Press, 2012), deserves a second, third, and fourth reading.

Shema

Listen!, the Rabbi said, God is One. Listen for what comes next.

When death arrives shema is a mezuzah on the threshold

of our lives, the soul’s last words before leaving a body.

But I no longer hear the hawk’s cry above the fields

where you left us. I can no longer count all the bones

that have buried themselves in me. Only the rabbi’s voice,

a stranger who entered the last ten minutes of your life

when the daughters and all their hours could not give the word

to let you go. This woman who spoke to you beyond a face

swollen from the fall, and your eyelids sealed

past opening. She told you what a good job you’d done, 

forgave all the secrets—locked drawers finally open—

their invisible contents drifting into the cold clinical air.

Her words were blood moving through us as we held hands.

The road and the river as we felt you pass.  Not so heavy as a song,

not even snow on the bough melting. I listened, I watched

you were so silent, Mother, I could not hear you leave.

(c) 2012 by Lois P. Jones

Lois P. Jones, portrait by Susan Rogers, 2013.

LOIS'S INTERVIEWS ON POETS CAFE

After being interviewed for the Poets' Cafe radio program (KPFK Los Angeles), Lois was asked to serve as a host - her voice is uniquely fit for the radio. She has since interviewed dozens of poets and her shows, produced by the brain behind the whole enterprise, Marlene Bond, are archived on the blog of Tim Green, the editor of Rattle. All friends among friends. Here's the list of poets that Lois interviewed and KPFK broadcast, on Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m.  - 30 minutes each. 

http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/poetscafe/

• Neil Aitken
• Lana Hechtman Ayers
• Tony Barnstone and Genuine Brandish
• Allen Braden
• Don Kingfisher Campbell
• Teresa Mei Chuc
• Marcia Cohee
• Sarah Cortez
• Chris Crittenden
• Cyrano (Troy Kotsur, Paul Raci, Stephen Sachs)
• Peggy Dobreer
• John FitzGerald
• Timothy Green
• John Guzlowski
• Carolyn Howard-Johnson
• Michael Hulse
• Georgia Jones-Davis
• Homeboy Poets
• Just Kibbe
• Mariko Kitakubo
• Deborah P. Kolodji
• Peter Ludwin
• Mira Mataric
• Neil McCarthy
• William O’Daly
• Dean Pasch
• Alice Pero
• Annie Reiner
• Susan Rogers
• Russell Salamon
• Julian Sands
• Melissa Studdard
• Taoli-Ambika Talwar
• Maja Trochimczyk
• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• J. Michael Walker
• Hilda Weiss
• Kath Abela Wilson
• Mariano Zaro

Here's her official bio from Poet's Cafe archives:

Lois P. Jones is host of “Poet’s Café” (KPFK,  Los Angeles 90.7 fm), and co-produces the Moonday poetry reading series in Pacific Palisades, California with Alice Pero. She is the Poetry Editor of Kyoto Journal and a four-time Pushcart nominee.  She has work published in Narrative Magazine, American Poetry Journal,The Nassau Review, Qarrtsiluni,Sierra Nevada Review, Askew, Raven Chronicles, and Antioch University’s Lunch Ticketas well as Destinations, the number one jazz CD in the U.S. (Tamir Hendelman, 2010) and other journals in the U.S. and abroad.  Several of her photographs have been published in national journals.   Lois’s poems have won honors under judges Kwame Dawes, Fiona Sampson and others.  New Yorker staff writer, Dana Goodyear selected “Ouija” as Poem of the Year in the 2010 competition sponsored by Web Del Sol.  She is the winner of the 2012 Tiferet Poetry Prize and is featured in The Tiferet Talk Interviews, which includes interviews with Robert Pinsky, Ed Hirsch, Julia Cameron and others 2013.

MILLICENT BORGES ACCARDI

Millicent Borges Accardi

I met Millicent after I already published her poetry in the anthology Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse (Moonrise Press, 2010), celebrating the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth. I loved her poems: not being Polish she was able to capture the impact of Polish folklore on Chopin, as well as the impact of Chopin on Polish music and on the world.  Wonderful work, I thought. 

Then, we had a reading with Wojciech Kocyan playing the piano and the poets reading their works, at the Ruskin Art Club in Los Angeles.  The mansion was an elegant, if somewhat neglected, setting for a poetry salon, with artwork on the walls, a piano and an inspired atmosphere of the Gilded Age.  At the end, I gave all poets bouquets made of piano keys with some green leaves from my garden. I took apart an old piano from my garage, specifically for that... hence the delight of the poets seen in the pictures. 

Millicent, a Topanga artist and hippie, as she often describes herself, then invited me to a new poetry workshop for women, Westside Women Writers, that has now grown to eight members, and meets faithfully each month, reading poems, discussing poetry matters, sharing meals and companionship. I have grown tremendously as a poet in these workshops and I owe my most recent book, Slicing the Bread, to this august company. Cheers to Millicent for bringing us together and making sure we focus on poetry and the good things in life. And thanks for the many wonderful meals at her enchanting Topanga Canyon cottage, that has seen many disasters but survived... Here are two things I'm grateful for, Millicent's poem about Chopin and her interviews with poets. 

Chopin with Cherries Reading at the Ruskin Art Club, LtoR: Millicent Borges Accardi, 

Georgia Jones-Davis, Gretchen Fletcher, seated Kathabela Wilson and Kathi Stafford, 2010.

Chopin

Millicent Borges Accardi      

                        Into the wide world, with no very clearly                                    

                                 defined aim, forever

                                                         —Jachimecki

One without

the other,

says Delacroix,

both will come together.

Find the mirror

of a mirror.

Wait for the sound

of a nightingale’s full round

note.

A waltz in A-flat,

uncertain where the music

will settle

for good

A tormented heart,

one that dared not

inform him

no one else was listening.

Sonata,

mazurka, waltz, nocturne, étude,

impromptu and prélude—

the piano begins

  

Blue rings out

sounding in the ears,

cloud in his lungs.

Uncertain is the shape

of romance

Sketching and observation

finds

nothing but moonlight.

Mediterranean and dawn are

melodies

written from life.

Millicent Borges Accardi, Kathi Stafford, Georgia Jones-Davis, at the Ruskin, 2010.

MILLICENT'S INTERVIEWS WITH POETS 

Millicent  publishes profiles of internationally based writers of Portuguese descent. 

The Interviews feature:

• Katherine Vaz, novelist: "Our Lady of Literature" http://portuguese-american-journal.com/katherine-vaz-our-lady-of-literature-interview/
• Nancy Vieira Cuto, poet, "Across the Universe" http://portuguese-american-journal.com/across-the-universe-interview-with-nancy-vieira-couto/
• Comedy: "The Story of the Portuguese Kids" http://portuguese-american-journal.com/comedy-the-story-of-the-portuguese-kids-interview/
• Ramana Vieira, singer, "Fado, a rising star in world Music" http://portuguese-american-journal.com/fado-ramana-vieira-a-rising-star-in-world-music-interview/
• Irene Marques, Scholar and Poet, "On Women's Voices and Cultural Identity" http://portuguese-american-journal.com/irene-marqueson-womens-voices-and-cultural-identity-interview/
• Frank Gaspar, Poet and Novelist: http://portuguese-american-journal.com/frank-x-gaspa-a-much-beloved-writer-interview/
• Nuno Judice, Poet: http://portuguese-american-journal.com/nuno-judice-one-of-portugals-greatest-literary-treasures-interview/

And here's her "formal" bio, for those who do not know her...

Millicent Borges Accardi is a Portuguese-American poet, the author of three books: Injuring Eternity, Woman on a Shaky Bridge (chapbook), and Only More So. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), CantoMundo, the California Arts Council, Fundação Luso-Americana (FLAD), and Barbara Deming Foundation “Money for Woman.” She organizes the literary series Kale Soup for the Soul: Portuguese-American writers reading work about family, food and culture. Follow her on Twitter @TopangaHippie.  

Her husband, Charles Accardi, is a painter, who created the beautiful portrat of Millicent, gracing the cover of her book - "Woman on the Shaky Bridge" (Finishing Line Press). Another portrait by Charles is reproduced below. What an extraordinarily talented couple.

Portrait of Millicent, by Charles Accardi.

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