Daffodils and Rose Gardens with Martin and Linda from the Society of Friends

I met a poet in Syracuse, NY. No, I did not meet him. I already knew.  Martin Willitts, Jr. has contributed fascinating poems to my anthologies, Chopin with Cherries and Meditations on Dicine Names. When he found out I'll be in Syracuse, he, and his wife Linda Griggs invited me to stay at their home and shared even more poetry with me, including the profound Daffodils, the poem that won the First international Dylan Thomas Poetry Prize in Wales, in 2014. The story of the poem is fascinating, too, as only after writing it (inspired by the appearance of daffodils in the spring garden, his vast knowledge as a retired librarian, and his own Quaker faith), did Martin find out that Daffodil is the National Flower and Emblem of Wales... 

I've seen the golden charms of daffodils scattered on the verdant green of spring grass - everywhere, not just in cottage gardens and window boxes, also in meadows, forests, parks, cemeteries - everywhere. After visiting Wales in early 1990s, I wrote a cycle of four poems for the four season, "Daffodils, Again."  Here's the last one, for winter.

SLEEP

Under thick blanket of the snow

forgetting past misdeeds

we will rest and refurbish what must be again

a truth beyond embarrassment and hatred.

Wait for the transparent, icy comfort

of newness, hidden from the view

of the quick and the dead

that we must pray for.

Silence spreads out from within

like frozen crystals on the surface

of ancient waters,

like liquid notes of birdsong 

easing me into that day, that morning

when smooth scent of the daffodils

brightened the air.

It will soothe, charm and alter

the painful wounds, gaping horrors,

severed limbs, mirth distorted into sneers,

and the daily supply of cruelty 

wrought from the four corners of this world

crowding the memory.

Sleep, sleep, eternal sleep

Wait, wait, you will awaken

Sun, sun, will shine on you

Daffodils, again. 

I did not read this poem for the Palace Poetry Group in DeWitt Community Library on June 9, 2015. I actually forgot that I wrote it. Instead I had a number of bilingual poems, including those from the "Meditations" and "Chopin" anthologies.  I started from a short poem inspired by an artists' project to help victims of the Station Fire in 2009; artists made beautiful pieces from things found in the ashes of homes destroyed by the flames ("Healing from the Ashes"). All the proceeds were donated to the victims that had no insurance.  The artwork that inspired the poem consisted of a burnt face of a clock, with equally burnt metal dragonfly wings marking every hour. Since I cannot find it now, here's my artwork withe dragonfly, and a clock face without hands, where time stops....

Time Stops on Dragonfly Wings.

(c) 2015 by Maja Trochimczyk

ENDLESS

The sundial glows
in a sunset of memory.

Time stops.

Dragonfly wings
freeze in a nanosecond

of fiery beauty
before evaporating.

Time stops.

We measure loss

in dragonfly wings,

in crystal shadows,

scattered wine-glasses

filled to the brim

with flames

before breaking,

before our time stops,

it too stops. 

Artwork by Ruth Dutoit

I read another poem written in the spring 2010, after that fateful September: 

FROM THE MOUNTAINS

In flames,

smothered with charcoal

the mountains sing,

greening –

grass is their song

and sage and lily

resounding calm

arising

from the slopes

shapes the air

into inverted bells

they call to me

waiting

for my small voice

to dissolve

in their harmonies

and ring

like a blade of grass

stirred by the breeze

on the high meadow –

passing into silence

In Syracuse, Ana Cecilia, one of the talented poets gathered at my reading, wanted a copy of the "Mountains" poem, but I had a hand-written translation into Polish in the margin, so I'm posting it here instead. I was very impressed with the poets' depth of reflection and verbal fireworks that carried the ideas on their incandescent flames. That's the beauty of giving poetry readings: you get to meet poets and hear voices that  you never knew existed.

Poets at the Palace Poetry Group Reading - Linda Griggs, MT, Martin Willitts, Jr. in the front.

My altogether delightful visit to Syracuse began with a walk through the rose garden with my hosts. Knowing my fondness for roses, you will not be surprised that it was among the highlights of my travel... 

Another delight was to converse with my very generous, kind, and hospitable friends who invited me to their home, showed me their Syracuse, their organic garden, and their worlds.  Linda is a therapist and a writer, Martin - an accomplished poet, artist, and musician...Together they do, what we all should do - make this world a better place... 

Why? They are inspired by their Quaker ways, more properly called The Religious Society of Friends. These are simple tenets of peace, love, generosity, and closeness with the Divine that lives in us all, I repeat, all - without exceptions, regardless of creed. If peace, therefore no violence of any kind. No weapons. No armies. No wars. If love, therefore acceptance of the beauty of every creature, large and small, everyone - smart and not so much, but with the heart. Seeing the world through the pink glasses of love is the best we can do, so let us follow the example of Quakers and be the way we are meant to be: lights in the world. 

To find out more, visit the Southern California Meeting website: http://scqm.org/og.html.

ROSE: A NO-NAME-YES

I plucked a rose in Regent's Park tonight.

Her name was "Iceberg."

Her petals? Dressed in whiteness--

But not that stiff kind,

More like old curtains--

Like lace... You remember, don't you?

I picked another flower by the gate.

"Miss Anna Ford" - She introduced herself

While her three siblings hid their faces

Beneath the tiny creases of her dress.

They are together now--

An unlikely couple

sharing the plate of water:

Soon they will fade and die.

A rose's death

is none of our business:

Picked, flourished, withered.

That's all.  But...

What splendor!

And... her beauty is all mine.

(Today I saw thick dark-red flames

Changing into the bluest blue of the gold.

I was transformed, bewildered and forgotten

In weightless joy, in secret warmth,

Lost to the stream of life, suspended

Under the vibrant hemisphere, alone at night).

There's no tomorrow.

"Never say die"--Marie Curie reminds us

From a huge poster of her Institute outside.

So pure and simple-- Just say--"Love."

Death’s cunning force

will take what's yours away,

Will strip you naked,

Will reveal what should be left undone.

I'll go there backwards

I'll face Her bravely

When my time--too--comes...

OF BLISS

I'm burning but I'm not burnt

In agony, but not yet dying

Light streams out of my heart

Filled into overflowing

Sounds of an ancient tongue

Trigger a glimpse of a time

When the rose and the flame were one

Wreath of fire which engulfed me

Dissolves into stillness

A white wave reaches its destiny

Of nothingness

The valley brightens 

Under a shaft of sunlight

The air is sweetened with flutes

And harps (how obvious!)

A breath and a tinkle

Spill into silence

Love is no father, no mother

But this: perfection

Of all things in all

Feelings collapsed into one

Not a longing, really,

And not satisfaction  

Perfect fulfillment: all dreams.

(c) 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk, from Miriam's Iris (Moonrise Press, 2008)

Still more readings from "Slicing the Bread" - in North Hollywood and Syracuse, NY

"The Voices of Survivors" 

 Maja Trochimczyk & Ed Rosenthal 

at No-Ho Unbuckled Poetry Readings

Saturday June 6, 2015 at 3:45 p.m.

The Unbuckled Poetry readings hosted by Radomir Luza  are held at T/U Studios, at 3:45 p.m. on the First Saturday of each month. 

The T/U. Studios are located at 10943 Camarillo Street (Behind Odyssey Video) (Off Vineland) at the intersection of Vineland, Camarillo and Lankershim. I will co-feature with Ed Rosenthal, author of "The Desert Hat" published by Moonrise Press in 2014 will co-feature at Unbuckled Poetry on June 6, 2015 starting at 3:45 p.m.

Radomir Vojtech Luza wrote the following description of the event: 
"At this time of despair and disjunction, disrepair and malfunction, it is artists that keep the globe spinning and the universe purring. Without these hardy souls, escape and hibernation would be nothing less than impossible and all but implausible. The day to day concerns and worries stripped bare by craftsmen and experts who entertain, educate, illuminate and inspire. It is artists who maintain the balance in a reality gone haywire and a turquoise orb given to tragedy, turmoil and chaos. Whether writers, actors, musicians, comedians, directors, poets, composers, editors or dancers, the fraternity has no end or beginning, merely a middle. And, as such, life changers and existence alterers each one." 

"Therefore, if you wish to encounter and embrace a crew or den of such magnificent muse manipulators, look no further than the monthly UNBUCKLED: NoHo POETRY reading taking place tomorrow, 6/6/15, at T.U. Studios in North Hollywood with Featured Poets Maja Trochimczyk and Ed Rosenthal. 
At four and a half years, UNBUCKLED is the longest running literary series in North Hollywood. It offers life, love, literature and a family atmosphere that changes the world once every 30 or 31 days." 

MAJA TROCHIMCZYK

"If there is a more meticulous, dedicated and passionate poet than Trochimczyk on the Los Angeles poetry scene, this poet has not met him or her. The Polish butterfly publishes, writes, hosts and features in a dizzying schedule that makes her one of the busiest and most sought after poets in the city.

She will be reading from "Slicing the Bread," a chapbook about her parents and their experiences in WWII. If the book is anything like her past work, we have a painstakingly beautiful piece of art to look for ward to. And, really, who would expect anything less from Trochimczyk. This is Maja's first Feature at UNBUCKLED and Mary and I could not be happier to have her."

ED ROSENTHAL

The collection of poetry is THE DESERT HAT by Ed Rosenthal, and Elena Karina Byrne describes it this way: "Ed Rosenthal's THE DESERT HAT not only recounts an incredibly vivid story of survival, but maps out the dangerous journeys of the heart and the imagination in that hallucinatory place between mind and body, between nature and man, between the past and the future. Like poet James Wright, Rosenthal 'goes/Back to the broken ground' of the self and finds a stranger there trapped in the cosmology of an endless, unpitying desert. As the stark 'sun burns holes/in to the sky' the psyche's true-north compass finds salvation's shade. Rosenthal climbed out of 'the busted monster's mouth' with a beautiful,moving book."
Rosenthal, who survived alone in the Mojave Desert for six and a half days, is a gifted poet who has never read at UNBUCKLED before, but is thrilled and overjoyed to be making his debut tomorrow.
Ed is also courageous and resourceful. The poet-broker overcame tremendous odds that may have humbled others in escaping the desert. 

OPEN MIKE-Open to all poets, writers, actors, musicians and comedians.
Read your own work or that of someone else. It is alright just to watch as well.

The Palace Poetry Group Presents

Slicing the Bread / Krojenie Chleba 

 A Bilingual Poetry Reading 

by Dr. Maja Trochimczyk

TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 2015, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm.

DeWitt Community Library, DeWitt near Syracuse, NY

3649 Erie Blvd. East, DeWitt, NY 13214 
Tel.: (315) 446-3578 www.dewlib.org

Dr. Maja Trochimczyk at Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural, Sylmar, February 2015.

Photo by Jessica Wilson

Slicing the Bread. A Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems

 Paperback. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2014, $14 + $2.99 S & H

https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=2149

Slicing the Bread is a unique poetry collection revisits the dark days of World War II and the post-war occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union that “liberated” the country from one foreign oppression to replace it with another.  The point of view is that of children, raised by survivors, scarred by war, wary of politics. The poems, each inspired by a single object giving rise to memories like Proust’s madeleine (a spoon, a coat, the smell of incense), are divided into three sections, starting with snapshots of World War II in the Polish Borderlands (Kresy) and in central Poland.

Reflections on the Germans’ brutal killings of Jews and Poles are followed by insights into the way the long shadow of THE war darkened a childhood spent behind the Iron Curtain. For poet Georgia Jones Davis, this book, “brings the experience of war into shocking, immediate focus” through Trochimczyk’s use of “her weapon: Language at its most precise and lyrical, understated and piercingly visual.” According to Pulitzer-Prize nominated poet John Guzlowski, Maja’s “poems about what the Poles suffered both during World War II and The Cold War afterwards are written with the clarity of truth and the fullness of poetry… Here are the stories of how the people she loved experienced hunger and suffering and terror so strong that it defined them and taught her, and teach us, the meaning of family.

        Los Angeles Poet Laureate - Luis J. Rodriguez

Luis J. Rodriguez gave a reading at the Tujunga Branch of Los Angeles Public Library and the Village Poets welcomed him on May 23, 2015: Dorothy Skiles, Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, and Maja Trochimczyk. Elsa Frausto who organized the reading could not attend but was present through her poems. 

On Awards and Women Poets - Marlene Hitt and Beverly M. Collins

COLLECTING DIPLOMAS FOR WOMEN

In April and May 2015, I was nominated for two honors, 2015 Women in Business Awards of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and the 2015 Women Making a Difference Awards of the Los Angeles Business Journal. 

It was a great honor to be selected for these distinctions, among some of the most dedicated and talented women of our city.  I was not able to attend the second ceremony. At the first, I was accompanied by Elizabeth Kanski, President of the Polish American Film Society in Los Angeles, and two Vice Presidents from Phoenix Houses of California, Dr. David Richardson and Earlene Bryson.  The nominations had as much to do with my day job, as Senior Director of Planning at Phoenix House, as with my evening preoccupations as a poet, publisher, and music scholar.

Maja Trochimczyk with Elizabeth Kanski

Award Gala with the Presentation of Finalists.

I was very excited about these distinctions, but, at the same time, I was busy contributing to the "distinctions" of others, notably, two female poets from our local communities, Marlene Hitt and Beverly M. Collins. Both have their books published with Moonrise Press this spring.

CLOCKS AND WATER DROPS by MARLENE HITT

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

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

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

Clocks and Water Drops is the first full-length collection of poetry by Marlene Hitt, the first Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, a former Director at the Bolton Hall Museum, a local historian, poet, and community activist. The book of reflections about her life, family and neighborhood changing through the decades, includes 73 poems in sections dedicated to: Children, Marriages, Portraits, Neighbors, Seasons, Small Things, Passages, and Farewells. The title captures the poet’s fascination with the flow of time, as relentless and powerful as drops of water that can shape rocks and move mountains. Poet Jack Cooper praises Hitt’s “astute and thoughtful voice” while Kath Abela Wilson admires her “confident and consistent phrasing, and exacting vision.”

What Am I Thankful For?

Why, for this little seed

caught between my teeth!

This seed from berries
cooked into jam
mounded in the cut-glass dish
my mother gave to me, 
sweet jam boiled
from my own berries
piled on bread
bought from Ralph’s
just two blocks away,
bread made from flour
ground from grain
grown on great fields,
grain that drank rain
dropped from clouds
that were coaxed from the sea,
grain, fed by the sun
that hangs in the great galaxy
spinning the universe,
which hangs above this sweet earth
while it turns over and over, 
where, under gathered clouds
heavy with rain
coaxed from the sea
which wakens the soil
rich with grain,
ripened kernels of wheat,
are milled into flour
to be baked into bread
which I can buy at Ralph’s
just two blocks from hereon which I can spread

this mound of jam
resting in the cut-glass dish
my mother gave me,
sweet jam made from my own berries
whose little seed
is caught between my teeth.

                                MUD IN MAGIC BY BEVERLY M. COLLINS

EPUB e-book version, $8.00

http://www.lulu.com/shop/beverly-m-collins/mud-in-magic/ebook/product-22172374.html

Paperback Version: ISBN 9780996398107, 96 pages, $15.00

http://www.lulu.com/shop/beverly-m-collins/mud-in-magic/paperback/product-22169233.html

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

Couple

Two people, cuddled in one blanket,

gaze at a blinking Christmas tree.

Breaths and hearts in unison.

Silence speaks loudly of contentment

She is yin to his yang.

He is apple of her desire.

Two people scolded by the heat

of an argument. Stubbornly rooted

in the center of their living room. Yell over

one another until numb in the eardrums.

Silence speaks loudly of resentment.

She is the thorn in his side.

He is the pain in her neck.

Two people swept up in the rapture

of renewed vows. Look knowingly,

tearfully into the familiar corners

of one another’s soul.

His thumbs gently stroke her finger

as they hold hands. Silence speaks loudly
of alignment. She is the M in Muse

He is the B in Backbone.

Two people; side by side on a hill,

turned peacefully toward the sky.

Near stone proclamation of long fruitful life

silence speaks loudly of eternal entwinement.

She is the warmth in the afternoon breeze.

He – the moonbeam in the night sky.

Holocaust Memorials and Reviews of "Slicing the Bread" Poetry Chapbook

The "Slicing the Bread" poetry book is starting to make waves. I did some readings, and sent some review copies, and the results are starting to appear in print and online.

The poems also have a life on their own, in their proper context.  One of my poems dedicated to the victims of Holocaust, heard not seen ("Bees and the Breeze") was just reprinted in the 17th Annual Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) issue of the Poetry Super Highway, managed by poet Rick Lupert. It is my second time in this commemorative issue, another poem was published two years ago. There are just a few poems about the Holocaust and its witnesses in the "Slicing the Bread" book. I'm honored to be among the distinguished group of 40 poets, each with a different story to tell, a bitter family history, or a reflection on the unimaginable. It is now children of survivors, children and grandchildren of victims who take upon themselves the task to remember.

http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2015/04/annual-yom-ha-shoah-issue-2015/

Rick picked a photo from the death camp of Majdanek, where many people from Lublin and Warsaw died; these areas are my ancestral lands, so it is good to share this, lest we forget who died, how and why...

_________________________________

The best response to so much suffering is silence, prayer and a resolve to not allow anything like that to happen again.

Like that - wars for financial gain, wars for territorial expansion, genocide for financial gain, genocide for "Lebensraum." We do have such wars today... And what are we doing about them?

             An Intermission

              She stopped waving the flag at the passing troops
              to sigh and say: "It is not my fault. I did not kill the children."
              "I did not want this to happen. I did not know..."
           
              He stopped singing the anthem with a hand on his chest
              to sigh and say: "It is not my fault. I did not carry the gun.
              I did not vote for the war. I did not vote at all."

              Why are they saying these things then, if they are not guilty?
              These innocent bystanders, the witnesses that did nothing,
              The silent, self-righteous ones... Their silence devours their souls.
           
              Their silence screams in the town squares. Their silence
              stifles the breath in their lungs.  This silence spreads quickly 
              like the plague of indifference. It is the death of all of us. 

                                                                                 Maja Trochimczyk, April 2015.
           

_____________________________

I have been so pleased that the two reviews published so far of the book have been so positive. I enjoyed the endorsements of my poet friends:

According to Pulitzer-Prize nominated poet John Guzlowski, These “poems about what the Poles suffered both during World War II and The Cold War afterwards are written with the clarity of truth and the fullness of poetry… Here are the stories of how the people she loved experienced hunger and suffering and terror so strong that it defined them and taught her, and teach us, the meaning of family.”

The Tieferet Prize winner and Poets-Café host Lois P. Jones points out that “Maja brings the Warsaw of her youth and that of her ancestors into vivid and heartbreaking detail. These are words that will move you to appreciate the simple privileges and necessities of life. Slicing the Bread is a feast in our universal and ever present famine.” As Jones wisely observes “It is the duty of the poet to convey story, but it is the art of the poet who can transform our often cruel and brutal history and affect forever, the way we look and listen to the world.”

According to Zofia Reklewska-Braun’s review of this volume (Goniec, March 2015), “One wants to read these poems. They attract the attention of the reader, from the first to the last… They are poignant, engaging. The readers’ own memories may become superimposed on these poems, if the reader is a Pole or a Polish Jew. The poems force one to reflect about the painful events from the modern history of Poland.”

Quite fittingly, Zofia Reklewska-Braun's review was printed in a Polish American periodical "Goniec."  This book, though about the War and its aftermath in Poland, is written for Polish Americans and for Americans, for those who do not know. All the families that I knew and was a part of had their stories similar to mine, some with more heroism, others with more suffering. None - not affected.

 http://www.goniec.net/goniec/inne-dzialy/goniec-poleca/poetycki-podr%C4%99cznik-przetrwania-maja-trochimczyk-%E2%80%93-slicing-the-bread.html

__________________________________

The second review, this time in English, appeared in the venerable Sarmatian Review published by the Polish Institute in Houston, Texas (April 2015).  The review by Sally Boss, one of the founders of the Sarmatian Review, praises the insightful yet hopeful poems that "describe the pain, hunger and humiliation" of the victims of the two huge millstones, Germany and Soviet Union, that "constantly grind against each other and repeatedly threaten the existence of the people in between" (a metaphor borrowed from historian Andrzej Nowak). 

"Then death, death, and more death - but not the anonymous death of millions, rather the loss of fathers, mothers, uncles, and aunts - sometimes in twenty-four hours, as when the incoming Soviets shot the narrator's uncle int he street and shipped his wife and two sons to Siberia, all in twenty-four hours."  The ray of hope found in this book is credited to the "delicacy and gentleness" in approaching the suffering, without condemnation of unnamed murderers, just as a  tribute to those they killed. 

On Portraits, Monuments, and the Feminine Touch...

Poets after a reading at Bolton Hall Museum, February 22, 2015

Photo by Gene Schultz

In the middle of my book tour, reading an always changing assortment of verse from "Slicing the Bread" - a chapbook inspired by war memories of my family and the war's long shadow over my childhood - I started to feel like a star. Fame got to my head and it started expanding, like a balloon filled with nothing but hot air. It was Victor Sotomayor who did it - by posting my portrait, by Jessica Wilson Cardenas, on his Instagram account. In a gold jacket, with eyes lower to the page, I do look like a poet, a real poet.

Photo by Jessica Wilson Cardenas, February 2015

Or else, I look like I'm going to eat that mike... In any case, the "Slicing the Bread" book tour took me to the Rapp Saloon in Santa Monica, Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, Foster Library in Ventura and Tia Chucha's Center in Sylmar... Each reading was different, with a different selection of poems. I can make it about my Mom, my Dad, the Germans, the Soviets, the killing of Poles, the killing of Jews, the destruction of human spirit by the war.... Lots of options, all hard to deal with. At some readings people cried. I never do, these vignettes are into facts of life. It would have been better without these facts. But there are other facts of life, of equally horrid magnitude, that are happening right now, and nobody cries... The wars, the famines, the poverty, children dying before they grow up. . . and here we are reading poetry, instead of doing something useful.

Susan Rogers and Maja Trochimczyk. Photo by Susan Rogers.

But, poetry is useful. By naming things, it brings order to the world. By naming monsters and demons, it draws borders around them, makes them tame.  Some open mike readers were taming their personal monsters, reading stories of trauma that only they know well... Catharsis is an excellent use of poetry, and so is description of others. I'm a bit wary of extraordinarily beautiful and skillful descriptions of suffering. Somehow, the pain gets lost in the enchanting thicket of the words. It is better to be very matter-of-fact precise and simple. Basic even, just the bare bones. 

Reading at the Rapp Saloon, Photo by Susan Rogers.

At the first reading, at the Rapp Saloon (where I was invited by host Elena Secota), I was afraid that so much sorrow, death, and destruction will exhaust the listeners so I ended the reading with a couple of love poems from "Rose Always." It was still the month of February, the month of love... But these heartfelt romances felt like fluff, decorative and ornamental, but not very useful after the heaviness and tragedies of war. 

I decided putting both books in one reading was a mistake, and then I picked some of the most dramatic poems for the next appearance, at the Bolton Hall. The weather went dramatic too, with torrential rain. It did not help that I was competing with the entire Hollywood glamour, the Oscars.  Still, the choice group of poets who did not want to admire fancy dresses, and came to share the poetry instead, provided me with an extremely attentive and sensitive audience. The reading pleased everyone, and the open mike poetry was outstanding - with Toti O'Brien, Mari Werner, and Mira Mataric who read her translations into Serbian of three of my poems (photos still to come).

Poets at Tia Chucha's, February 27, 2015. Photo by Maria Kubal

The Tia Chucha's audience was equally focused on each word, made more difficult by my foreign - to them unfamiliar - accent.  But  I had help. For "The Way to School" Drgn Billy, percussionist from Tikkal Sun, and my newest Facebook friend, agreed to play his flat hand drum when I pointed at him. The blunt strokes of the mallet punctuated the poem, transforming the reading into a true performance. I was going to read more, but that artful and expressive piece needed nothing further. I can read more at the next stop of my poetry tour...

Monument for Polish civilians murdered by Germans in Warsaw in 1944.

Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

The Way to School

Walking to her high school on Bema Street. 

she counted three cement crosses in ten minutes 

every morning.

One in the middle of her subdivision of apartment blocks, 

standing guard at the edge of chipped asphalt: 

Nine hundred.

One in the mini-park, where two gravel paths cross 

on a patch of overgrown grass after you go under the train bridge: 

Twelve hundred.

One on the wall of a grimy three-story building, 

with round bullet holes still visible in the stained, grey stucco: 

Twenty two hundred.

She memorized the inscriptions: “This place is sanctified 

by the blood of Poles fighting for freedom, murdered by Hitlerites.” 

 “Some Germans were good, not Nazis,” her teacher said, 

“They marched in the May 1st parades.”

Only the numbers differed, and dates:

August 5, August 6, August 7, 1944. The Uprising.

50 thousand civilians shot in the streets of Warsaw. 

The bullets came fast. Those soldiers had practice. 

Wehrmacht, Police Batalions, RONA, Waffen SS. 

No shortage of killers. Some had children back home. 

She did not want to think of thousands.

She did not want to know their names.

"The Way to School" was first published in San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, vol. 63 (2014) and reprinted in "Slicing the Bread" chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2014).

Monument to Polish civilians murdered by Germans in Warsaw in 1944.

Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

_______________________________________

Tragedy and romance do not go together, unless the latter is the antidote for the former. This is the case with my Trilogy of Grief and Loss, published in a special issue of Clockwise Cat - entitled Femmewise Cat and including two of my photos and three poems: The Waiting, the Tragedy and the Shooting Star, a portrait of 29th century pianist-composer, Maria Szymanowska. 

The principle of the whole endeavor was highlighting women's creativity - women's issues, and women's art. Poetry, flash fiction, essays, rants, photography, drawings, profile of female artists we all must know. The volume is excitingly rich in content. It will take me a while to read this double journal of monumental proportions. The fun part, you can turn the pages electronically, and read it, on the screen, as if on paper.  I like that and will keep reading. 

             http://issuu.com/clockwisecat/docs/femmewise_cat_part_ii?e=13963388%2F11675756

I was extremely pleased with finally getting a whole series of excellent portraits from a reading, all by Jessica Wilson and Mary Kubal. (Otherwise, I pose with the book after the reading ends, and these shots often look as they are, completely staged and fake).  It was so kind for them to take the time to upload or send pictures to me, to spend time with my poetry and its aftermath.  This is love of a true friend. 

 

                                 Reading at Tia Chucha's. Portraits by Jessica Wilson Cardenas.

Is love just fluff, roses and chocolate hearts and kittens? No, not at all. Sometimes it costs a lot. Hours of waiting, tears in silence... The project of "Heartbreaks" in which Karineh Mahdessian paired up male and female poets (from the previous, separate anthologies), turned out to be not for me. I much rather write of long years of waiting, of those old fashioned virtues - faith, hope and love, but the greatest is love. ... 

In the meantime, big thanks to my female friends - who invited me, came to my readings, took photos, published my work, translated my poems, and supported me in a multitude of ways.  With this amount of love, the Women's Month, surrounding the International Women's Day (March 8) is off to a good start. 

Ah, and one more thing... The Editor, Kresse Armour, put an article about my Distinguished Service Award from the Polish American Historical Association in The Voice, Sunland-Tujunga's community paper. She called me "Local Woman" - I am so proud! "Local woman, walking down the street..." A foreigner, with a foreign accent still very pronounced, I made Sunland my home and now I am "local" - what a great gift for the Women's Month! 

A Calendar of Readings from "Slicing the Bread"

I am happy to report that the publication of my book "Slicing the Bread: A Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems" will be followed by a series of readings, starting from a sample of two poems read at the Rattle Reading Series, Flintridge Bookstore, in January 2015. This reading is posted on the website documenting poetry readings by local poets, Poetry LA (www.poetry.la): Maja Trochimczyk. The previous recording, of "Three Postcards from Paris" was done in 2011 at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga.



The first poem was "What to Carry" reproduced below, and the second was the title poem "Slicing the Bread" - reproduced in an earlier issue of this blog.


What to Carry

You never know when the war will come,
her mother said. You have to be ready.
Most things are unimportant.
You must take your gold, your family jewels.
Diamonds will buy you food.
Gold will save your life. Forget silver, too heavy.
Take sturdy boots with two pairs of socks,
a warm, goose-down comforter on your back,
one picture, no books. Leave it all.
You will have to walk, sleep in a ditch, walk.
Pack lightly. What you carry, will protect you.
From starving, from freezing. That’s what matters.
Goose-down and gold. Hunger and snow.

She still has her goose-down coverlet,
useless in California. Her mother squished it
into a suitcase the first time she came to visit.
The down came from geese plucked decades ago
in Bielewicze, by her Grandma, Nina.
Diamonds? She sold her rings
to pay for the divorce, keep the house
with pomegranates and orange trees.
Her shoes are useless too –
a rainbow of high heels in the closet.


READING DATES AND ADDRESSES

FEBRUARY 2015

Friday, February 20th, at 8:30 p.m. Santa Monica Third Fridays at the Rapp Saloon Poetry Reading Hosted by Elena Secota Featured Poet, with Joe Camhi
The Rapp Saloon, 1436 2nd St, Santa Monica, CA 90401, https://www.facebook.com/events/332585603610874/

Sunday, February 22nd, at 4:30 p.m. Village Poets Monthly Reading. Bolton Hall Museum, 10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042. Featured Poet.

Thursday, February 26th, at 7:30 p.m. Ventura Ventura Poets Reading hosted by Phil Taggart “Voices of Survivors” book reading from  “Slicing the Bread” with Ed Rosenthal reading from “A Desert Hat” inspired by being lost and found in the Mojave Desert
E. P. Foster Library, 651 East Main Street, Ventura, CA 93001 Phone (805) 648-2716

Friday, February 27th, at 8:00 p.m. Featured poet at Poetry Open Mike, Host Victor Sotomayor, Sylmar
Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural, 13197 Gladstone Avenue "A" Sylmar, CA 91342
(cross street/210 exit: Hubbard) Phone:(818) 939-3433

MARCH 2015

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

APRIL 2015

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


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

MAY 2015

Saturday, May 9th, 3 p.m. Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Pasadena, hosted by Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Santa Catalina Branch of the Pasadena Public Library.
 999 E. Washington Blvd., Pasadena (east of Lake Blvd).

Saturday, May 16th, 4 p.m. Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, Venice “Crossing Dark Borders: The Poetry of Shadow, Shade and Long Night.” Lisa Cheby , Georgia Jones-Davis and Maja Trochimczyk celebrate the publication of their new chapbooks. Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Boulevard, Venice, CA 90291 (310) 822-3006 www.beyondbaroque.org

JUNE 2015

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

Tuesday, June 9th, at 7 p.m. The Palace Poetry Group Presents "Slicing the Bread / Krojenie Chleba"
A Bilingual Poetry Reading  by Dr. Maja Trochimczyk at the DeWitt Community Library, DeWitt near Syracuse, NY 3649 Erie Blvd. East, DeWitt, NY 13214  Tel.: (315) 446-3578 www.dewlib.org

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK

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

DESCRIPTION

This unique poetry collection revisits the dark days of World War II and the post-war occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union that “liberated” the country from one foreign oppression to replace it with another. The point of view is that of children, raised by survivors, scarred by war, wary of politics. Children experienced the hunger and cold, witnessed the killings, saw the darkening blood spilled on the snow and hands stretching from locked boxcar windows. Some heardthe voices of murdered Jews like “bees in the breeze,” others learned never to throw any food away, because “war is hunger.” The poems, each inspired by a single object giving rise to memories like Proust’s madeleine (a spoon, a coat, the smell of incense), are divided into three sections, starting with snapshots of World War II in the Polish Borderlands (Kresy) and in central Poland. Reflections onthe Germans’ brutalkillings of Jews and Poles are followed by insights into the way the long shadow of THE war darkened a childhood spent behind the Iron Curtain. For poet Georgia Jones Davis, this book, “brings the experience of war into shocking, immediate focus” through Trochimczyk’s use of “her weapon: Language at its most precise and lyrical, understated and piercingly visual.”

According to Pulitzer-Prize nominated poet John Guzlowski, Maja’s “poems about what the Poles suffered both during World War II and The Cold War afterwards are written with the clarity of truth and the fullness of poetry… Here are the stories of how the people she loved experienced hunger and suffering and terror so strong that it defined them and taught her, and teach us, the meaning of family.” A fellow Polish-American poet, Linda Nemec Foster praises the “unwavering honesty” and “stark imagery” of Trochimczyk’s poetry that “bear witness to the hate that destroys, to the truth that restores, and to the poetic vision that honors our common humanity.” The Tieferet Prize winner and Poets-Café host Lois P. Jones points out the “vivid and heartbreaking detail” of poems that “will move you to appreciate the simple privileges and necessities of life.” As Jones wisely observes “It is the duty of the poet to convey story, but it is the art of the poet who can transform our often cruel and brutal history and affect forever, the way we look and listen to the world.” Poet Sharon Chmielarz concurs: “You will remember the taste of this book.”