The New Year with a Sunbloom and a Mystic Rose

Camellia blossom, Descanso Gardens, December 2012

The Year 2013 will be very unusual. It is going to be the Year of the Snake, apparently filled with good luck, material blessings, but also with deception and interpersonal problems.  What it willl be depends on us, and we can make it a beautiful, blessed year, if we property focus our attention on things that matter.

Haiga "The Gift" (c) 2012 by Maja Trochimczyk

In response to an invitation by Susan Rogers, I created a little reminder of this focus on what really mattters as a bas-relief collage haiga, that is a paper and fabric image with a haiku-like comment.  The invitation was to create a poem or an art-work on the theme of the Snake or Target on a rectangular board.  The results in the form of calligraphy, artwork, photos will be displayed at the Japanese American Cultural Center in Los Angeles.  

My choice to make a surreal flower with petals from a white poinsetta, daisy, and a photo of matilla poppy, with a double eye in the middle reflected the choice of the theme - the Target. The eye is copied from another collage of mine, created for the Beatrix Project of Kathi Stafford for my poem "Rosa Mystica" and published in her chapbook (and reprinted below). 

Here, the double eye of the rose here becomes the eye of the Mystical Sunbloom. I entitled my little art-piece for the New Year 2013 - "The Gift" - and I think a lot of people, especially Christians and those following mystical traditions know the answer to this riddle. If not, reading the anthology Meditations on Divine Names is highly recommended. The answer to every question about the meaning of life and everything is "42" as we know from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  The trouble is we do not know what is the question...

Ever calling - Never heard

Ever seeking - Never seen

Revealed

Detail from "The Gift" (c) 2012 by Maja Trochimczyk

Happy New Year 2013!

________________________________________________________________________

The original version of the eye appeared in a digital collage for "Rosa Mystica"  - a poem about Mother Mary and Dante's Paradiso.

Rosa Mystica

The love that calms this heaven always offers welcome

 with such greetings to make the candle ready for its flame 

 ~ Dante, Il Paradiso, Canto XXX: 52-54 

I knew it all along

(at least, suspected)

Beatrice’s swimming cap

betrays Heaven as nothing 

but an oversized pool

where saints swim like fish

in the river of light 

and God-Mother rests 

on white lounge petals 

of a Mystic Rose 

Giovanni di Paolo’s

illumined pages of Il Paradiso  

unveil creature comforts 

beyond the sapphire glow

of Dante’s Empyrean 

Angels curl in their pods

like babies asleep 

on metallic wings 

with round pillow halos 

of shimmering gold 

Multi-hued gowns of cobalt, 

salmon, palm green, and sienna 

reveal the childish joy 

 of heavenly hosts

adoring the Trinity 

Cherubs play hopscotch 

dance the Sarabande

twirl like a swarm of bees 

among light-bursts that do not 

 sear their eyes with pain 

Rushing waterfalls of laughter 

sparkle in diamond waves

of the robes of our Mother 

Daughter of her Son 

figlia del tuo figlio 

She gave Him a kiss 

on the way to Rose Garden 

serene Love’s Greeting

beneath seraphic wings 

rainbows that cut our darkness

 NOTES:

The digital art collage includes my photographs and Beatrix from Giovanni di Paolo’s illustrations for Il Paradiso. These images are a part of the British Library's Yates Thompson 36 Codex made in Sienna in the 15th century. Rosetti’s drawing of the Rose Garden is in the collection of the Museum of the Fine Arts in Boston and his painting of Love’s Greeting is in the Isabella Stewart Garner Museum in Boston.

The reference to the Virgin Mother, “figlia der tuo figlio” (daughter of your son), is from Dante, Il Paradiso, Canto XXXIII: 1.

 The ephigraph is cited from the Princeton Dante Project (http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html): “Sempre l'amor che queta questo cielo / accoglie in sé con sì fatta salute / per far disposto a sua fiamma il candela.” Il Paradiso, Canto XXX: 52-54.

Poets' Picnic in Benicia - 8/6/11

On Saturday, August 6, from noon to 4 p.m., Poets Laureate of California will have a reunion in First Street Park with Gazebo (Military and First Street) in Benicia, California.

Organized by Benicia's Poet Laureate, Ronna Leon, the Poets' Picnic is subtitled "Grassroots Poetry on the Grass" and will include readings by Poets Laureate or Poets Laureate Emeriti and their Poetry Communities during an afternoon of poetry, food, and discussion. All guests are asked to bring a Cold Picnic Dish to share. The Benicia poetry group will supply watermelon and beverages. Listeners are also encouraged to bring a poem to put in a picnic basket for a chance to have it read by a Poet Laureate in the reading.

The reading by Poets Laureate is from 2:30 to 4:00 pm and will include the following poets (who will read their own work and poems picked at random from the picnic basket):

*Cynthia Bryant, Pleasanton, 2005-07, 2011-12
*Terry Ehret, Sonoma County, 2004-06
*Joel Fallon, Benicia, 2006-08
*Deborah Grossman, Pleasanton, 2009-11
*Parthenia Hicks, Los Gatos, 2010-12
*Ronna Leon, Benicia, 2010-12
*Juanita Martin, Fairfield, 2010-12
*Janell Moon, Emeryville 2010-12
*Connie Post, Livermore, 2005-09
*Mary Rudge, Alameda, 2002 ongoing
*Robert Shelby, Benicia, 2008-10
*Allegra Silberstein, Davis, 2010-12
*Gary Silva, Napa County, 2008-10
*Maja Trochimczyk, Sunland-Tujunga, 2010-11
*Cher Wollard, Livermore, 2010-14
*Ronnie Holland, Dublin 2008-2010
*Ruth Blakeney, Crockett, 2006




Ronna Leon's previous and ongoing project was placing "Poem Homes" around her community of Benicia. These sturdy and decorative containers, somewhat resembling birdhouses, included copies of poems sent in from around California by poets who wanted to participate. The poems were printed out and distributed via the Poem Homes - people could just pick up and take home a poem they selected in one of the Poem Homes that could be found in various offices, stores, and community locations around Benicia. What a sweet idea!

Another great idea that Ronna has brought to fruition was taking portraits of all Poets Laureate in California, and illustrating them with a short quote from a poem and a handwritten signature by each poet. These black-and-white portraits are certainly a fascinating gallery of spiritual and artistic personalities. My portrait was taken in the library of John Steven McGroarty, California Poet Laureate in the 1930s, whose home now serves as a community arts center in Sunland-Tujunga. In the portrait, I'm holding the heart filled with laurel leaves that is passed on from one poet to the next during the solemn ceremony. I organized a poetry booth at their puppetry festival in 2010 and was teaching a poetry class to kids that summer. We held some of our sessions in the historic library, filled with vintage photos, books, and memorabilia. I would not mind moving in to that room, to spend my afternoons thinking poetic thoughts while looking at the pines surrounding the mansion and at the mountains beyond.

While my participation in the Poets' Picnic is not certain, I have contributed the following selections to the Poem Homes: Tiger Nights, Buddha with Swans, Skydance, "Look at me..." and Rose Window. I have already reprinted in this blog the Buddha with Swans and the Rose Window, the other three poems, were published earlier in various venues.

Two of these pieces will soon appear in a discussion of Moonday Poetry reading in August. The third poem that I submitted to Ronna Leon's Poem Homes, is entitled Skydance and belongs with a series of poems associated with paintings and other artwork created at Manzanar Internment Camp. This historical site documents a dark page in American history: the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans suspected of wrongdoing as potential "enemies of the state", though not proven guilty. Their lives and careers destroyed, the Japanese-Americans showed a remarkable resilience when they returned to their communities and started to rebuild their lives.

Some, like Henry Fukuhara, a former prisoner, painter and organizer of the annual plein-air workshops, have never forgotten and hoped to make Manzanar an example of darkness overcome by light, of suffering erased by creativity. A Japanese-American photographer, survivor, artist and poet, Beth Shibata, is a frequent contributor to these workshops and has inspired many members of the Pasadena group, Poets on Site. In 2010, she made a collage of a photo of the mountains and paper cranes that permeate the landscape and ... my poem.

Skydance

~ to Henry Fukuhara and the prisoners of the Japanese Internment Camp at Manzanar

the mountains rose and fell
with their glory useless –
trapped in time they did not
think they’d make it –
days so long, stretched
to the horizon, mindless

and the sky danced above them
avalanche of paper cranes

it was not a time for joy
the landscape said –
bleak, unforgiving,
it was not that time yet –
in gaps between minutes
a shadow rose, a breath

and the sky danced above them
spring dreams of paper cranes


contours remembered,
felt in the fingertips
filled the world with color
faded pastels, knowing,
pale rainbow, hues
of distance, serenity

and the sky danced above them
paper cranes, oh, paper cranes


This poem, inspired by Shibata's art is dedicated to her master. Similarly to the poem "Look at me.." the narrative form is structured around the irruptions of a brief refrain, bringing the dance of the sky down to the earth and the painter's canvas. Henry Fukuhara lost his sight and painted from memory; his friends and associates continued to surround him and draw inspiration from his joie-de-vivre.

Skydance was published in Poets on Site chapbook on the Exhibition of art from the Annual Plein-Air Workshop at Manzanar and Alabama Hills, held in September 2010. The chapbook belongs to a series of ekphrastic poetry chapbooks edited by Kathabela Wilson. The series continues and the future Poets on Site projects will include my voice.

_______________________________________

Maja Trochimczyk's Portrait as Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, (c) 2010 by Ronna Leon, used by permission.

Poetry and photos (c) 2009-2011 by Maja Trochimczyk. Photos taken in Sunland, Granada Hills, and at Lake Elisabeth, California.