The Spring with Birds and Susan Dobay's Art from China

April showers, May flowers... and birdsong. During the Village Poets reading at the La Crescenta Library, my fellow poets formed a chorus of birds, using children's toys from Poland - little bird sculptures that are half-filled with water and whistle like birds. These poetic birds provided a background and refrains to my poem, inspired by Susan Dobay's painting, "Musicscape 12" - the same painting was also featured at the "Co-Inspirators" reading at Pasadena Public Library, organized by Rey R. Luminarias.

Reading with Musicscape 12, Scenic Drive Gallery in Monrovia, 2012

See, how we dance?

~ inspired by Susan Dobay's "Musicscape  12"

Simon says – “grow”
and our roots reach for water
our branches for the sun

Simon says – “blossom”
and our pink petals open
in a gold mist of newness

 Simon says – “sing”
and we let the breeze whisper
with hummingbirds, jewels, leaves

 Simon says – “fly”
and we turn and turn again
in swirling clouds, voiceless music, dancing

This poem is published in Poets on Site's anthology, "On Awakening" edited by Kathabela Wilson (Pasadena, 2012),  and on display at the LitFest on May 11, 2013 (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pasadena’s Central Park. 275 South Raymond Avenue). For schedule. http://litfestpasadena.org/ The LitFest will feature panels, readings, performances... You will meet Kathabela and Poets on Site. You will be able to paint a poem on Just Kibbe's car...

At the Pasadena LitFest 2012 with Kathabela Wilson

The month of May, honored by so many poets as the month of love and romance, is not considered a good month to be married in. Apparently, the romance of May is short-lived; for the marriage to survive you have to tie the knot in June or September!

While reading an exceedingly bizarre treatise by a 19th century Swedish mystic, Swedenborg, I was struck by his vision of Heaven in which eight-limbed creatures float by; these creatures consist of couples that found their perfect match and are blended into one being while the ones that are still single frantically search for their better half. How far do you have to go to find an ideal person to share your life with?

Sometimes very far, sometimes you’ll meet that person in high school or earlier. The partners in one of the best marriages I know met in seventh grade Another happily married octogenarian admitted that every day she feels a flush of joy when she hears the key turning in the lock when her husband comes home. Her friends who long ago stopped talking to their husbands and are now living in a marriage of “suspended animation” or a “permanent truce” laugh at her “silly infatuation,” but, she says, it took years of hard work to get there. Someone else said that the secret to a happy marriage is “compromise” – how distant from romantic love! How close to the “arranged marriage” of so many cultures!

Arranged or not, each culture has different wedding customs. For instance, in China, the bride’s traditional shoes, veil and other wedding clothes and symbols were red (red is also used in India). There even was a special calligraphy symbol of “Double Happiness” that decorated wedding gifts, to bring joy and happiness to the newly-wed couple. What would happen if you leave that tradition behind?

 During her trip to China, Hungarian American artist Susan Dobay saw a bewildered looking Chinese bride in a white, Western-style dress and used the picture in her artwork, called Bride on the Rock. This image gave rise to my poem and here it is…

Vision, Unveiled


“Why are you leaving us?”
Chinese characters dissipate in the air

Clouds descend
Down the waterfall of jade

Clouds float down
The slopes of aquamarine

“Where are you going?
Why are you doing this?”

Centuries of crystal
Petrified traditions stand silent

Watching over
The white tulle of a Cinderella dress

The dark-haired bride
Is anxious without her talisman

Lost without the red hue
Of prosperity, crimson joy she hides

The sign of double happiness
Marked in blood-red ink

 Under the pristine silk
 Of her bridal gown

They cannot see – she listens
To the whisper of the crevices

Her veil flutters
On the breeze


© 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk




Since the path of the bride took her away from her roots in Chinese tradition, I decided to add a poem about a young girl who went in the opposite direction – towards the wisdom of her ancestors, symbolized by learning to count in Chinese. It is important to find a balance between staying connected to tradition, and making a new place for yourself in the world. Sometimes it takes a lifetime…just like a good marriage.

A Skipping Lesson 

One Two Three 
En Deux Troix 
Ein Zwei Drei 

she learned to count
like the foreigners
do

she skips up the steps
and stops at the top

attentive

she listens to stories
of her ancestors
deep within
her veins

Yee Uhr Sahn 
Suh Woo Lyo 

blood circling
from her heart
to her breath

tomorrow

she'll learn to count
all the bright red hats
on the way through
the city

in Chinese

Yee Uhr Sahn 
Suh Woo Lyo 
Chee Bah Jyo 
Shi 


(c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk
“A Skipping Lesson” was published in Quill and Parchment, March 2013.

The three stages of life - childhood, adulthood, maturity receive different degrees of attention in  Western society.  Our gaze stops at the peak, the bride at the summit, the young man at the top of his prowess. We look in fondness at children, give too much attention to adolescence as a distinct and different stage in life (replete with its own, highly commercialized culture), and tend to devalue the wisdom of age.  "What creature walks on four legs, then on two, then on three?" Asked the Sphinx? The answer - a human being, crawling, walking and shuffling along with a cane...

A friend of mine, in her mid sixties, complained with exasperation how she hates being patronized by people in public spaces, ignored, disrespected, belittled, like a child. "And hare we today, dearie..." "Aren't we flustered..."  She's talked down to by silly teenagers, shop attendants, nurses, as if she were already senile, useless... In China, the ancestors are revered, Confucianism places a premium on proper respect and obedience to the elders. The wisdom of the elders is also recognized in Native American traditions. Tbe women's wisdom is the key to survival, endurance, no matter what. Sometimes very hard, sometimes it is the only way.

My third poem from the "Women's Trilogy inspired by Susan Dobay" deals with the wisdom that old women share with the youngsters. If you learn, you will survive, if not, you will become a forgotten part of history, that little corner that someone might once discover, for it was not written by victors and is of little import on the public stage. This poem is published in the current issue of The Statement Magazine, a literary journal of California State University at Los Angeles. Come to the publication party on May 16, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. in the Golden Eagle Ballroom of CSULA.

... Too Bold 

The ancestors’ weight heavy on their shoulders
The ages’ wisdom embroidered on their skin

 Bend down, bend down 
 You will not be broken 

Tall stems of rice bow low before the wind
Slide through the onslaught, a sudden surge of war

Young mothers whisper silence to their daughters
Girls watch, repeat the gestures of their kin

Bend down, bend down 
You will not be broken 

You have to learn the art of disappearing
Invisible, you will outlive the strangest times

Be still, be patient, breathe the longest hours
You have to do it all and remain unseen

Women alone survived in our village
Into the river silver tears have flown

Bend down, bend down 
You will not be broken 

Bend down, bend down 
You will not…


 © 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk
.

National Poetry Month - Celebrating My Poetry Circles (April 20 and 29)

Have you ever had the feeling that you've done what you were supposed to do in life and everything else is a bonus, a desert of sorts? After publishing some of my most intimate and autobiographical poems in the last few years, I do feel that way. I've left the proof of my existence - on paper, and online - in a portrait of what I really think and who I think I am. It was such a welcome relief from the heavy-duty writing of musicology where I had to dig into other people's lives and thoughts, and play a guessing game about what they were about. Or, worse, as many musicologists do, impose my own theories and ideas onto my subjects, quote the most fashionable experts of the moment, and strive to make myself famous at the expense of those I wrote about.  I'm glad I don't have to anything, any more. . . So, in a way, I'm done, no reason to continue.

But wait, there's so much more! Having finished the egocentric trip of describing myself, I still have the whole world to write about, and there's plenty to do! Here's my poem about poetry writing, published last year by Apryl Skiles in her Edgar Allan Poet blog and her guest piece for another journal.

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 amidsts 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

(c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

 Let's focus on what's really far away - all these galaxies and clouds of interstellar dust - and on what's really close and often overlooked - the treasures found on daily walks. The spark of joy seen in someone's eyes. Apryl Skies just made this poem her "Poem of the Day" for April 18, 2013!  She previously published it on her blog, at Edgar Allan Poet: http://edgarallanpoet.com/Definition__Writing.html For the National Poetry Month last year, I also wrote an article that she published with the poem. How sweet! http://www.examiner.com/article/majatrochimczyk-poet-laureate-the-passing-of-laurels"

It is good to have friends. It is better to have poets as friends. For the National Poetry Month 2013,  I have been invited to three group readings: Westside Women Writers, Village Poets, and Rey Luminarias's Poets and Artists Reading.

The reading by Westside Women Writers was held on April 17 at the Topanga Public Library on 122 N. Topanga Canyon Rd. The reading included individual sections and a group reading of poems inspired by an ancient, Cycladic sculpture of a harp player, from the Getty Villa antiquities permanent collection. The poems were written during the first field trip of Westside Women Writers, organized by Kathi Stafford and held on March 30, 2013 at the Getty Villa, Malibu. The Westside Women Writers, created five years ago by Millicent Borges Accardi, currently include, besides Millicent, Kathi and myself: Georgia Jones-Davis, Susan Rogers, Lois P. Jones, Sonya Sabanac, and Madeleine Butcher. 

The Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga will appear at the La Crescenta Library on Saturday, April 20 at 2 p.m.  The library is located at 2809 Foothill Blvd., La Crescenta, CA 91214, tel. (818) 248-5313 (the parking is in the back). The reading's program includes poetry by Dorothy Skiles, Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, as well as fellow past poets Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, Maja Trochimczyk, Mari Werner and Beverly M. Collins. In addition to selections by each poet, the reading will include four poems read by a group - Sensations, Remembering, Enrollment, and The Veil, the Weave.  More information is posted on the Village Poets blog. 

Village Poets of Sunland Tujunga is a group of former Poets Laureate of Sunland Tujunga who organize poetry readings in their community, write poetry, and publish books, making sure that poetry life is rich and vibrant in the foothills. Every two years Village Poets organize a competition for the Poet-Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga and, in order to involve the local community in the selection of its Poet-Laureate, establish a Poetry and Literature Committee of Sunland-Tujunga which selects the next Poet. Dorothy Skiles is the current Poet-Laureate in our community (2012-2014). Another important project of Village Poets is the Monthly Village Poets Reading at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, CA. The next reading, by Neil McCarthy, will be at the McGroarty Arts Center on Saturday, April 27, 2013. The upcoming readings are announced in local "good news" paper - The Voice of the Village. 

Reynald Romea Luminarias wrote a beautiful poem for my anthology Chopin with Cherries. I was very happy to include it in the book.

There Is No Other Love

                     

                              After Chopin’s Etude in E Major, Opus 10, No. 3

R. Romea Luminarias

                                                    —for Annie

November sunlight peers

Between leaf-veins. Oval windows.

Rose petals on velvet. Autumn vines our arms

Glazed with ripeness, steeped in unrestrained embrace.

Tongues stilled; drought-pained mouths this one now-love alone

 

Can heal. Our Love steers

Unknown universes’ oceans of shadows,

Maps red coral galaxies. Anemone-meteors swarm

Around us, stir hunger’s hull knifing waves, probing abysses.

There is no other love obtains the soul, breaks open steel and stone;

 

There is no other Love destroys this present, ancient drought, this fall

Stripped bare of songs, deprived of harvest; there is no other Love sees

Through storms of swirling fires; only this love, O this our Love alone:

No other Love ordains, builds up the spirit, breathes life into dry bones.

 

 

 In return, three years later, he invited me to present some of my poetry at his National Poetry Month celebration at the Pasadena Public Library, Wright Auditorium, April 29 at 6 p.m. The event, entitled "Co-Inspirators: Poets, Artists, Music-Makers" will present interactions between various arts. The Pasadena Library is located at 285 East Walnut Street Pasadena, CA 91101, tel. (626) 744-4066.

Rey invited me to read three poems: "Memory Mirrors" (inspired by Susan Dobay's digital artwork, "Reminiscence" from her "Impression of China"), and "A Study with Cherries," and "How to Make a Mazurka" from the Chopin with Cherries anthology. For the first poem, Rick Wilson will accompany me on a Chinese flute from his exquisite and extensive flute collection. For the Chopin's pieces, celebrating his music as heard in my childhood, at my grandparents house in a Polish village, I will bring two Chopin music boxes... It is going to be a beautiful, beautiful event.

A Summer Rose Dream 

                  ~ inspired by Chopin's letter from Nohant


Rose petals float down 
Onto the desk covered with music 
Pages of notes and ink blots 

Chopin looks out the window 
A carmine blossom in her black hair
Exotic beauty at the ball 

He sees the eglantine roses 
The picket fence of long ago 
His sister smiling 

Fragrance spills on the velvet 
Of night, notes scatter 
On a canvas of his thoughts 

His fingers search for memories 
On smooth ivory keys 
Roses and nightingales, roses

(c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk

________________________________

Photos from Descanso Gardens, Tujunga Wash, and Roses from my garden.
(C) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk

Norooz, Passover, and Easter - New Life and Fire

Fire and Fire

Whoever invented Easter Bunny that lays Chocolate Eggs on the lawn was not thinking through the rather dismal consequences of this wild leap of imagination... No matter, children are happily looking for chocolate confection scattered on the lawns of American suburbia... Would the popular-culture Easter be more memorable and dramatic, instead of just plain silly, if it included jumping over the bonfires, like the Persian purification rituals held at night on the Spring Equinox? 

On March 20, 2013, Persians around the world, as well as inhabitants of many countries in South-East Asia celebrated the holiday of Persian New Year dating back to the time of Zoroaster, three thousand years ago. This time of new beginnings, new hope and plans for new future, is marked by a 13-day holiday, with intense celebrations held on the 
night of the Equinox, when the day and night are equal and day starts to become longer than night. Families gather around bonfires and those brave enough to do it, jump over the fire with a prayer, to leave the old worries and troubles behind and leave them to burn in the fire, and to take into the new year the vitality and brightness of flames. In 2010, the UNESCO recognized the holiday of "Novruz" ("New Day"), added to the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The purification by flame is also a vital part of the Passover Celebrations, commemorating an ancient event of Exodus, the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery. Before the solemnities can begin, each household is thoroughly cleansed and purified of all leaven bread and bread crumbs. On the last night before Passover, a search is conducted by candlelight, and the leaven bread remnants are burned before the celebrations can begin.  The fermentation of the leaven breads is a symbol of the festering of old memories, obsessive thoughts, regrets and guilt that need to disappear. A new beginning and true freedom of heart are not possible without leaving behind the burden of the past. What better way than burning the remnants of old, or jumping over the fire?

Christian Easter also focuses on fire at night. The Easter Vigil begins from starting a huge bonfire outside of the church and from blessing of the fire and of the Paschal Candle, marked with symbols of Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and with the symbols of the year that it will serve the faithful, its flame a symbol of the burning presence of Christ. The congregants gather in darkness, broken only with the single flame of the Paschal Candle. This light spreads as more candles are lit, from one person to the next, until the entire congregation is a sea of flickering candle-lights. This is one of the most effective symbolic rituals of the Church - the drawing of spiritual light from ancient Fire, the sharing of Light from one person to the next, in unbroken chain of the faithful, each protecting his or her little flame and sharing it with his/her neighbor. 

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

T. S. Eliot - Little Gidding, from Four Quartets

Listen to Eliot's own reading of Little Gidding (16 minutes)

My meditations on the Divine Fire led my thoughts along a less elevated path, starting from a parking lot at my son's school:

Incandescent (Via Positiva)

How gently and lovingly
You wake in my heart,
Where in secret you dwell alone ~
         ~ St. John of the Cross 
            The Living Flame of Love

The car was pulling out of the parking lot
When friends texted my son —
A sixteen-year-old, six-foot baby
"Is that your sister, or your mom?
She’s hot!" He looked at me
And waved at them, laughing.

Consumed by divine flames
I was not careful. I did not close
All doors, all windows.
Fire got in.

The Divine Pyromaniac
Set the world aflame
Filled me with fire
Infinite.

I’m a conflagration of grace.
The presence shines brightly,
Dissolves, liquefies, forges
A new being — one
With the One
Beyond.

Translucent blaze
Engulfs me, suffuses all
With one feeling
One thought —

Fire flows through my veins —
Brightness — Fire


(c) 2012 by Maja Trochimczyk
Reprinted from Meditations on Divine Names (Moonrise Press, 2012)

The Eggs of Easter

In Polish homes, the week before Easter is the week of Spring cleaning - washing windows, curtains, throwing out unnecessary things, sorting through the clutter. The cooking begins in earnest on Good Friday, that is the day of most solemn and dramatic celebrations in the Church and the most austere Lenten meals at home - pickled herring and potatoes... 

For the Slavic peoples, Easter food is all about eggs: colored beautiful dark red by cooking them in onion-skins, and scraping patterns with needles.  Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, Slovaks, Czechs, Slovenians, and Serbians all have their traditional patterns of decorating Easter eggs. Thus, the new beginnings of the spring have another, equally ancient symbol: the egg. The Romans started things "from the egg" - ab ovo...  

On Easter Saturday, before the solemnities of the Easter Vigil, Poles bring beautifully decorated baskets of food and eggs to be blessed and later shared at Easter brunch. My basket is decorated simply with fragrant orange blossoms from my garden. 

Since I have not written yet any poems about Novruz (or Norooz), Passover, Easter, Easter eggs, or even Easter Bunnies, let me wish everyone a wonderful celebration of new hope, new beginnings and a personal renewal in serenity and joy this spring. I'll sweeten my wishes with a little confection of a poem about one of my most favorite desserts, zupa nic. My mother used to make this ice-cream substitute when there were no ice-cream stands anywhere and a line would form for the rare supply of real vanilla ice-cream at the grocery stores. We had to make do without, thus learning the virtue of ingenuity.

The Taste of the Sky

My mother's zupa nic - soup nothing
had puffy clouds of egg whites
floating in a yellow sea
of delight. I chased them
with my spoon that perfect summer.

I'm floating now
in thinning blue
of Technicolor sky
a meadow for
ten thousand cloud sheep
I cannot count while they
cast shadows
on tidy little gardens
of tidy little houses
of tidy little people

They go about their daily chores
folding sheets, baking bread,
I'm cooking up a storm
of dreams that will soon vanish
like clouds in my soup nothing

The Taste of the Sky - After Magritte, Digital collage by Maja Trochimczyk

What else? If you want to read more about Polish holiday food in poetry, my "mazurka" and "mushroom" poems are posted on the Village Poets Blog, in a report from the March 2012 "Bite Me" Art Exhibition at the McGroarty Arts Center in Tujunga. The Village Poets Poetry Reading held on March 16, 2013 also included poetry about food read by Dorothy Skiles, Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, Bryan Story, Alice Pero, and Rick Wilson (who read verse by Kathabela Wilson).

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2013/03/bite-me-art-exhibit-at-mcgroarty-arts.html

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2013/03/more-poetry-at-bite-me-art-exhibition.html

_____________________________________________

Photos of fire, Easter basket, orange blossoms, and yellow sky (C) by Maja Trochimczyk

Poets on Site at the Colonnade Gallery in Pasadena

Tim Callahan reads, Mira Mataric, Maja Trochimczyk and Hans Zima listen, Colonnade Gallery, Pasadena, March 2, 2013.

On March 2, 2013, Poets on Site and artists gathered at the Colonnade Art Gallery in Pasadena (2421 E. Colorado Blvd.Pasadena, CA 91107), for the Opening Reception and Poetry Reading for this month's exhibition, featuring, among others, artists Kathabela Wilson, Debby Prohias, Galen Young, Robert Stewart, Ron Pettie (gallery owner), and Hans Zima.

Poets on Site included, in person, Tim Callahan, Taura Scott, Bryan Story, Mira Mataric, Pat McClelland, Debbie Kolodji, Robert Stewart and Kathabela Wilson, as well as off-site poets who sent their work from around the world: Billy Howell-Sinnard, Joan Stern, Sheila Windsor, Veronika Zora Novak, John Daleiden, Pauline Dutton, Vivian Lee, Gary Blankenship, Chris Dominiczak, Josie Hibbing, Willie Bongky, Erika Wilk, Brian Zimmer, Michele Harvey, Dalton Perry, Richard Dutton, Tomislav Maretic, Gerry Jacobson, Pat Geyer, and Jonathan Vos Post. The readings were accompanied by Rick Wilson on Native-American flutes from his astounding flute collection.

I selected three pieces to write about: a photo collage of Yosemite Falls and Cactus Flower by Debby Prohias, a Camellia by Galen Young, and a Death Valley photo by Hans Zima. Debby was so delighted with having a poem written about her piece, that she gave me a camellia! It decorated my lapel in some pictures taken right next to her artwork.

Debby Prohias listens to "Flower Falls" by Maja Trochimczyk

Flower Falls

by Maja Trochimczyk

If stars grew on rocks

And hills flowed with
Liquid light and honey

Would we still doubt
The life force asleep
Inside black basalt stone

Dancing in crisp verdant air
With a sycamore leaf, falling
To awaken in the roots

Of the roots beneath
The earth's surface, filling 
Our veins with sunlight

Yosemite Falls and Cactus Flower by Debby Prohias

She then commented about my poem, Flower Falls, being “such a beautiful way of expressing the feeling of being present in Yosemite and the discovery of a flower that came to open in our backyard.” The flower was that of an elusive night-blooming cereus, a nocturnal miracle, rarely seen, and made even more magical by Debby’s photo collage. The camellia blossom proved to be quite useful in the second poem I read, since the Camellia by Galen Young was not on display. While the camelia I got was pink, my poem may be illustrated with a picture of a white camellia, that I took at Descanso Gardens this spring.

White Camellia by Maja Trochimczyk

Asleep

by Maja Trochimczyk

in the corona

of white petals

gold treasure

waits for its fruit

dark green leaves

color the air, drop

onto the sidewalk

tired of sunlight

the smoothness

of petals shelters

a dream always

blooming within

I followed my reading of this slow, misty and sensuous poem with one filled with joyful exuberance. The contrast between Rick Dutton's work and mine, and the shifting mood of the readings perfectly illustrated the essence of Poets on Site work: creative encounters of different poets with the same artwork and the richness of inspiration that the arts may provide.

Nonetheless, I was not happy with the way my other poem for Hans Zima’s photograph did not quite fit the image I saw live. I had written it to a photograph posted online: the desert looked empty and sad, with muted colors waiting for rain and life to awaken. But the rocks of the original photo in the gallery were an explosion of energy and color, under an intense turquoise-sapphire sky. This is why it is so important to go to exhibitions and see the artwork “live” – in its original form. What’s online “blah” in real life is “aha!” (The same rule is applicable to live concerts, especially with acoustic instruments).

Dissatisfied, I wrote another poem for Mr. Zima right then and there, to another photo from Death Valley. It showed a broad panorama of red sands leading into distant, dark blue mountains, shrouded with mist. The intense hues of this unusual landscape resonated with a feeling of timelessness that, coupled with the Death Valley name, resulted in a spiritual inspiration. Hans was very happy with the poem and commented: “I was amazed how you could create such a beautiful work of art in just a few minutes.” I answered that it “wrote itself” and I just transcribed it. It is a good poem for the awakening of the spring and the Easter season.

Death Valley Sunset by Hans Zima

Death Valley Sunset

~ inspired by a landscape photo by Hans Zima

now it ends

we've come to the edge

the last bush, the last drop of water

it's over....

the red sands wait, immobile

sinking into crimson

darkness

whale bones of white rocks

poke through 

it's over...

it's time for the dark to claim us

exhausted

on the arid, salty plain

we'll walk and walk

for forty days, to the other edge

of Death Valley

we will cross shadows, enter 

misty mountains, sparkling streams

and sunrise

hidden, alluring, they call to us:

"come, come along,

do not fear"

we will reach beyond  

rest in the lapis-lazuli expanse

of new-born sky

© 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk

Debbie Kolodji, Rick Wilson, Kathabela Wilson and Maja Trochimczyk at
the Opening Night at the Colonnade Gallery in Pasadena.

______________________________________________

The Colonnade Gallery Opening Night was one in a series of recent Poets on Site poetry events that included also a wonderful reading for Susan Dobay's Impressions of China at the Altadena Public Library on February 9, 2013 (where I read poems written to Dobay's images of a bride and three old women).

Another poem  of mine written to that series of Chinese travel impressions was published in the Quill and Parchment poetry journal (March issue). It welcomed spring in a light-hearted mood, with "A Skipping Lesson." The poem is accompanied by the image by Susan Dobay that inspired  my work and by four tanka by Poets on Site: Kathabela Wilson, Erika Wilk, Pauline Dutton and Huang Yiwei. 

Sharon Hawley, Joan Stern, Susan Dobay, Rick Dutton, Rick Wilson, Taura Scott,  Bryan Story, Kathabela Wilson, Just Kibbe, Pauli Dutton, Erika Wilk and Maja Trochimczyk at the opening of Impressions of China by Susan Dobay, Altadena Public Gallery, February 2013.

Finally, Poets on Site and friends met at a Poets' Cafe Listening Party at Kathabela and Rick's Salon in Pasadena on February 21, 2013. The reading there featured Kathabela Wilson, Susan Rogers, Neil McCarthy, myself and Mira Mataric - five poets featured by Lois P. Jones at Poets Cafe. Our interviews are now found on Tim Green's website.

Maja Trochimczyk with Kathabela Wilson, reading "The Music Box" at the Poets Cafe Listening Party, February 2013.

I read my "Music Box" (with a music box) that was specifically requested by the host of the Radio Program whom we could hear, during the KPFK fundraising drive, while collecting funds to help poetry on air "live long and prosper."

Mira Mataric, Kathabela Wilson, Susan Rogers and Maja Trochimczyk,
Poets Cafe Listening Party at the Wilson's Salon.

And if that was not enough, my article on Polish Folk Dance movement in America and its paradoxical inspiration by a Stalinist genre has appeared in the Cosmopolitan Review, a journal dedicated to Polish culture in English. This article resulted from a book I published in 2007 on Polish Dance in Southern California; another, fully annotated version of the article appeared in the Polish American Studies (available on JStor.
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The camellia photo (c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk, other photos courtesy of Kathabela Wilson.

A History of Love and Roses for Valentine's Day

Petals of Chicago Peace Rose. Photo (c) 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk 

The association of roses with love goes back to the times of Sappho, an ancient Greek poet (or, rather as 19th century writers would say, poetess), whose fragments of love poems, have inspired countless poets with their vehement passion and colorful metaphors since her death more than two and a half thousand years ago. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s translation, Sappho’s rose is “the eye of the flowers… the grace of the earth” and “the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers / On pale lovers that sit in the glow unaware.” Sappho’s rose “breathes of love” and its petals “laugh with the wind…”

        Rosa gallica rosea flore simplici by P.J. Redoute

The Song of a Rose

By Sappho, translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

For Zeus chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth,

He would call to the rose, and would royally crown it;

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth,

Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it!

For the rose, ho, the rose! is the eye of the flowers,

Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair,

Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers

On pale lovers that sit in the glow unaware.

Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose lifts the cup

To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest!

Ho, the rose having curled its sweet leaves for the world

Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up,

As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west.

French Perfume Rose. Photo (c) 2012 by Maja Trochimczyk

The roses that Sappho and Browning wrote about blossomed once a year and had much smaller, though often much more fragrant flowers than the roses we know today. Our long-stemmed hybrid tea roses are the offspring of repeatedly blooming china roses often grafted onto sturdy rootstock of the common dog rose that is resistant to cold and disease. We pay for the year-round abundance of flowers with their fragrance… And, we equate roses with love:

The Smile of a Rose

When you smile

Heaven opens

and the earth grows solid

under my feet,

no longer quicksand –

I breathe slowly

When you smile

pink roses bloom

in my autumn garden,

the pomegranate ripens

in late sunrays –

I fear no one

When you smile

Bach’s partita for solo violin

fills the room

with the air of beauty –

angels dance,

I dance with them

© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk

Photo (C) 2011 by Maja Trochimczyk

Napoléon’s first wife, Empress Joséphine, (de Beauharnais, 1763-1814, crowned in 1804, and divorced in 1810), loved roses so much she dedicated a garden at her summer residence Chateau de Malmaison to these magnificent flowers. Assisted by an army of gardeners, she managed to gather over 250 varieties in a formal rose garden that after her death in 1814 and the fall of Napoleon in 1815 fell in disrepair, but not before her roses were immortalized in painting. 

Rosa gallica aurelianensis by P.J. Redoute

      
Who has seen the living beauty of sempervirens, boursaults, or ayshire Old Garden Roses, grown from European sturdy stock and Chinese repeat bloomers? These antique varieties, long forgotten by gardeners, were immortalized in Redouté’s paintings.

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840) recorded the shapes and hues in splendid watercolors, while Claude-Antoine Thory provided vivid, botanical descriptions. Les Roses still delight with their now exotic beauty.  The shapes of most blossoms in Redoute’s paintings are quite different from the tall, tubular flowers we know from mostly scentless hybrid teas of our times. These were the gallicas, albas, damask, china, and moss cultivars of Old Garden Roses.  Many blossomed just once a year and had a lovely fragrance; they were all the more precious for it. The Souvenir de la Malmaison not by Redouté), a bourbon rose with multiple petals, survives as a reminder…


         Rose Souvenir de la Malmaison, 1843

Here’s a lovely variety of Rosa Gallica, called by the French Rosier d’Amour and the Germans  rose d’Autriche, or the  Austrian rose. Its description in Empress Joséphine’s book is poetic in its own right, especially for readers who do not know biological terminology:

“Its stems are armed with thorns… that break off easily, leaving numerous scars. The leaves consist of five… oval leaflets… doubly dentate with glandulous edges… The Rose of Love has a corolla of five petals … The aromatic flowers grow singly or in clusters or two or three at the end of the secondary branches…  The pyriform and slightly hairy fruits are reddish or orange when ripe. They last well into the winter.”

Rose of Love - Rosier d'Amour by P.J. Redoute.

Rosier d’Amour

Fresh, moist petals open

the rose blossoms

in the garden of delight, beauty

She waits for the one

who’d reach past sharp thorns,

past her childish defenses

into her heart

She longs to be touched

and admired for her colors,

for her velvety glow

For the intense burst of pleasure

seducing the one who cares enough

to come with a simple offering –

a life for the rose

© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk

The Latin name of this variety is “Rosa gallica pumila” and it refers to the small size of the shrub, graced with enormous, bright red flowers. But how does “glandulous” look like? And what about “tomentose” (not to mistake for “comatose”)?  The meaning of “Pyriform” we can guess – it probably refers to the shape of the flame, that, just like the flame of true love, lasts well into the winter.

Apparently, this is a wild rose widespread in Germany and growing with vigor: “it can reappear and multiply almost as rapidly as it is uprooted.” How does it do it? In three ways: “through self-sown seeds, offshoots, and subterranean roots.” (from Frank J. Anderson’s commentary, 1979). For the farmers, it was worse than a weed, because its branches were thorny and when they took it out once, it kept coming back with a vengeance. Now, isn’t it just like real love? Even the unwanted one? If it is real, it will survive anything and everything. It will be unchanged from the day it miraculously appeared, to bless a life that was empty without it, to the last breath on Earth, well into the winter of life. Will it survive beyond the grave? I think it will, but let us return to the roses.


Rosa gallica regalis by PJ Redoute

The national bard of Scotland, Robert Burns (1759-1796),  immortalized the delight of the June-flowering rose and its symbolism of love in a folk-style Scottish ballad of 1794:

Red, Red Rose

By Robert Burns

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June:

O my Luve’s like the melodie,

That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!

And fare-thee-weel, a while!

And I will come again, my Luve,

Tho’ ‘twere ten thousand mile!

Petals of "Love" Rose. Photo (c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk.

The rose landscape changed when English officers and merchants went to China in the middle of the 18th century. They came back with rose varieties they named after themselves. Thus Slater and Parson in 1752 followed by Hume and Park before 1792 entered the History of the Rose. During the Napoleonic wars, containers with Hume Blush Tea-Scented China Rose imported for Empress Josephine’s Rose Garden were let through the naval blockade. With the oriental newcomers, English and French gardens were filled with rose blossoms from spring through winter frost. 


     Slater Crimson China Rose by Redoute

The gardeners crossed the “new” arrivals (whose thousand-year Chinese history was not known in the West) with their own roses and nine new varieties appeared, the tea rose among them.  Josephine’s gardener, Andre Dupont is credited with inventing this art of hybridization. Through artificial pollination, he created 25 of the varieties found in her Rose Garden.  

And look at roses today! How different they are from those of the past. Let anyone who ever saw a rose deny the truth of Evolution, and let them deny the human role in creating evolution… The world is still unfinished and we have a role to play in shaping it, in defining what it will become. For proof, we do not need to look further than a rose and its magnificent blossoms. . . It takes courage to create a new rose. It takes courage to love, as noted by Hafiz, a 14^th century Persian mystic:

How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its

Beauty?





Rose Photo (C) 2011 by Maja Trochimczyk



But there is one more issue… Is a rose that can be seen year-round and bought every day, as precious as that blossom that only comes back once a year?  My love of roses comes from my childhood: watching the miracle of leaves and petals opening on a plant that survived the winter under the cocoon of straw…

 Is the love, so abundantly celebrated with red chocolate hearts and endless advertising for St. Valentine’s Day gifts, only valued for its heightened presence in the heat of passion, symbolized by the intense, blazing hues? Or is it the love that survives, day by day, that we should cherish instead? This love dares to blossom endlessly, again and again, well into the winter... Let us celebrate the Valentine’s Day 2013 with poems of love and roses. . .

Rose Photo (c) 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk 

The Rose Garland

I thought roses.

I thought rich, velvet blossoms.

I thought a red rainbow

from deep crimson to delicately pinkish.

The secret was underground

where the roots sustain

the multi-hued orgy of sensuous allure –

flowers opening to dazzle and fade.

The strength of the rose

is invisible – you see the blush

of seduction in each leaf and petal,

 You admire their charms.

Yet, you care for what’s out of sight,

not for the obvious.

I thought your love.

I thought how you adore me.

I went deeper down to the source.

The rose, Sappho’s lightning

of beauty, breathes love,

laughs at the wind and wonders.

The mystic rosebush dances,

crowned with the royal

garland of fire.

© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk



Rose Photo (c) 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk



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NOTES:

Poem by Sappho, translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in Greek Poets in English Verse, William Hyde Appleton, ed., Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893.

Pierre-Joseph Redoute (1816-18), Les Roses, 168 plates with descriptions by Thory. The originals burned with the Louvre in 19^th century. Copies were published and continue to be reproduced. The text quoted above is attributed to Delanuay and translated into English, in an album P.-J. Redouté – Roses, Liber, 1986.

Frank J. Anderson, ed. The Complete Book of 169 Redouté’s Roses, New York: Abbeville  Press, 1979.

John Ingram, The Language of Flowers or Flora Symbolica, including floral poetry, original and selected, with original illustrations, printed in colors by Terry. New York: Frederick Warne, 1887.  http://archive.org/details/cu31924067841738

Maja Trochimczyk’s poems are no. 1, 20 and 51 in her book Rose Always: A Court Love Story, third revised edition (Los Angeles: Moonrise Press, 2011)

More information about roses in poetry and art may be found on the following sites:

All About Roses on Squidoo.com http://www.squidoo.com/all-about-roses#module161480105

Rose Gathering by Daphne Filiberti, www.rosegathering.com

Rosarian Web Site, www.rosarian.com 

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COMMENTS

From Lisa Marguerite Mora: 

"Thank you for sharing this--beautiful photographs. I love roses too. Especially like this passage from your post: "And look at roses today! How different they are from those of the past. Let anyone who ever saw a rose deny the truth of Evolution, and let them deny the human role in creating evolution… The world is still unfinished and we have a role to play in shaping it, in defining what it will become. For proof, we do not need to look further than a rose and its magnificent blossoms. . . It takes courage to create a new rose. It takes courage to love, as noted by Hafiz, a 14th century Persian mystic: How Did the rose Ever open its heart And give to this world All its Beauty?""

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