Marlene Hitt's Second Poetry Book Yellow Tree Alone. Selected Poems (March 2023)

Marlene Hitt's second full-size poetry volume, Yellow Tree Alone. Selected Poems includes 129 poems written between 1998 and 2022. These poems bring together the fruit of a lifetime of wisdom and creativity.  Some poems are reprinted from earlier publications; the poet's favorites have appeared in print several times. Others are either new or have never been published. The poems have been selected by Marlene Hitt, Alice Pero and Maja Trochimczyk from Marlene's vast output of well-crafted and insightful verse.  Alice organized poems into seven chapters, borrowing their titles from Marlene's poems: 1. That Silken Wisper, 2. Threads, 3. Along the Path, 4. Fallen Words, 5. Thunder under the Ground, 6. The Web, 7. Pillars of Motes.  The title is borrowed from the last poem in the book, a description of a bright yellow tree, lonely in a vast empty field - a symbol of the loneliness of the poet, often misunderstood by those around her. It is a universal condition of every poet, every creative and inspired soul that reaches beyond the mundane, beyond their immediate surroundings, transmuting the chaff of experience into the gold of words.  Marlene Hitt's poetry perfectly exemplifies this alchemy of creative craft.
182 pages (xviii pp. prefatory matter, and 164 pp.); 6 in x 9 in. 
ISBN 978-1-945938-34-4, paperback, $22.00 plus S & H. ISBN 978-1-945938-35-1, ebook, in ePub format, $10.00. Cover photo by Karen Winters; design by Maja Trochimczyk. With a Preface by Alice Pero, In Appreciation by Dorothy Skiles

Yellow Tree Alone


Yellow tree
Stands glowing
In sideways light
Regal and glorious
Her beauty
Her message
For life’s meaning
Wasted
With no one
To see that golden
Radiance
She sings
To no one
Who’d hear her
But the Sun, Ra
The Giver of Gold

About Marlene Hitt

Marlene Hitt was the first Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga (1999- 2001). She has been a member of the Chupa Rosa Writers of Sunland- Tujunga and the Foothills since its inception in 1985. Her critically-acclaimed first poetry collection Clocks and Water Drops was published by Moonrise Press in 2015. In addition to publishing numerous poetry chapbooks, she has authored a non- fiction book Sunland-Tujunga, from Village to City. Her poems appeared in Psychopoetica (UK), Chupa Rosa Diaries of the Chupa Rosa Writers, Sunland (2001-2003), Glendale College’s Eclipse anthologies, CSPS California Quarterly and Poetry Letter; three  anthologies (Chopin with Cherries, 2010; Meditations on Divine Names, 2012; and We Are Here: Village Poets Anthology that she co-edited in 2020 with Maja Trochimczyk). 
Most recently she was one of 12 poets invited to contribute to Crystal Fire. Poems of Joy and Wisdom (2022). Her work appears in Sometimes in the Open, a collection of verse by California Poets Laureate, and The Coiled Serpent, anthology of Los Angeles poets, edited by Luis Rodriguez (2016). She served at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga as Museum Director and docent for many years. Ms. Hitt was the history writer for the Foothill Leader, Glendale News Press, North Valley Reporter, and Voice of the Village newspapers. She has been honored as the Woman of Achievement by the Business and Professional Women's Club, Woman of the Year by the U.S. Congress, and many congratulatory scrolls by the City and County of Los Angeles, and the State of California. In 2019, Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga presented to Marlene and her husband Lloyd, a Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing their support of poetry in the Foothills.

About this Book

Two lines in Marlene Hitt’s poetry collection, Yellow Tree Alone, encapsulate the spirit of her captivating book: “In this box is the past,” she writes, and, “Memories! I have used them all again and again, have dusted, polished, have put them away.” Her book—like a metaphorical “box”—overflows with vivid, soulful vignettes of ancestors braving turbulent oceans; parents and grandparents nurturing their progeny; childhood homes decaying into earth; townspeople navigating wars and ceaseless change; family members parsing love or lack of it. Matters of the heart, or of the metaphoric natural world, big and small, pulse and undulate in Hitt’s poems with strong rhythms, rhymes, and poetic imagery. This book is a tribute to her compassionate understanding of the human condition.
     ~Thelma T. Reyna, 
National Award-Winning Poet
Author of Dearest Papa: A Memoir in Poems