The Rainy Bread. More Poems from Exile. ISBN 978-1-945938-47-4
The Rainy Bread. Poems from Exile. ISBN 978-1-945938-01-6
The Rainy Bread: Poems of Exile, a poetry collection by Maja Trochimczyk has been enlarged by 31 poems and reorganized into six parts. An updated e-book is available. The book now includes 61 poems about forgotten stories of Poles living under the Soviet and German occupation during WWII, especially in the Eastern Borderlands of Kresy. They were killed, deported, imprisoned, or oppressed after the invasion of Poland by Germany on September 1, 1039 and by the invasion by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939. Some of these brief portraits capture the trauma and resilience, ordeals and miraculous survival stories of the author’s immediate family. Their experiences of displacement, hunger, cold, and poverty during the war are typical of Polish civilians.
These fictionalized fact-based memories are coupled with depictions of survival of other Poles deported to Siberia, the Arctic Circle, or Kazakhstan; those left the Soviet Union with the Second Corps of the Polish Army under the command of General Władysław Anders; those who were transported to refugee camps in India or Africa; and ended up in Argentina, Canada, Australia or the U.S. Their tragedies and survival stories are not widely known, so it is only fitting that a book of poems dedicated to family and personal resilience would touch upon these forgotten histories as well.
The book is a companion to “Slicing the Bread” (2014), with which it shares some poems, including vignettes from the author’s childhood in Warsaw. Organized into six parts - Destinations, Nowhere, Hunger Years, Resilience, There and Back, What Remains - the updated book follows a trajectory of descent into the hell of deportations, imprisonment, hunger, mass murder, and ascent into resilience and survival. The dark rain of sorrow changes into the diamond rain of delight with life. Trochimczyk writes: It has been quite difficult to select poems for the "uplift into light" section that brings a "happy end" of sorts to the harrowing experiences of an entire generation of Poles - exiled, starved, murdered. Finally, the idea to bring them to the author's present happiness in the garden, mixed in with some sweet childhood memories turned out to be the the best solution.
Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D., is a Polish American poet, music historian, photographer, and author of seven books on music, most recently “Gorecki in Context: Essays on Music” (2017) and “Frédéric Chopin: A Research and Information Guide” (co-edited with William Smialek, rev. ed., 2015). She currently serves as the President of the California State Poetry Society, managing editor of the California Quarterly, and President of the Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club in Los Angeles, promoting Polish culture in California. Trochimczyk’s nine books of poetry include “Rose Always,” “Miriam’s Iris,” “Slicing the Bread,” “Into Light”, and four anthologies, “Chopin with Cherries” (2010), “Meditations on Divine Names” (2012), “Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology” (2018) and “We Are Here: Village Poets Anthology” (2020). This is her ninth poetry collection.
SAMPLE NEW POEMS
