Poetry Books Published by Moonrise Press 

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

Picture
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 plus S & H. ISBN 978-1-945938-35-1, ebook, ePub format. Cover photo by Karen Winters; design by Maja Trochimczyk. With a Preface by Alice Pero, In Appreciation by Dorothy Skiles, Publisher's Note by Maja Trochimczyk. About this book: https://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2023/03/marlene-hitts-second-book-yellow-tree.html​

12 Poets featured in Crystal Fire. Poems of Joy and Wisdom (October 2022)

Picture
​​ Edited by Maja Trochimczyk, and illustrated with paintings by Ambika Talwar, the “Crystal Fire” anthology gathers poems of joy and wisdom by 12 poets, 8 women and 4 men: Elżbieta Czajkowska, Joe DeCenzo, Mary Elliott, Jeff Graham, Marlene Hitt, Frederick Livingston, Alice Pero, Allegra Silberstein, Jane Stuart, Ambika Talwar, Bory Thach, and Maja Trochimczyk. The poets span all ages and diverse life experiences. They include émigrés from Poland, Cambodia, and India, and those born in the U.S. College professors join community poets. Native speakers appear alongside those for whom English is the second, or even the third language. Young graduates and retirees. Married, single, or widowed. The ”joy and wisdom” they write about are also different, as each poet follows their own path and gathers unique reflections to share with their readers. More about this book with poetry samples:
https://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2022/09/moonrise-press-publishes-crystal-fire.html
https://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2022/09/moonrise-press-and-scenic-drive-gallery.html​
BUY IT NOW:
 ISBN 978-1-945938-57-3 (color hardcover), $68.00 plus S&H
 ISBN 978-1-945938-58-0 (color paperback), $53.00 plus S&H
 ISBN 978-1-945938-59-7 (eBook), $10.00, instant download

Maja Trochimczyk's Collection of "Positive Poetry" - Bright Skies Published in May 2022

Picture
​Maja Trochimczyk dedicates this collection of poems, “Bright Skies,” to her children and grand-children, asking them to read and enjoy her verse “when they grow up.” The volume features 85 poems written in 2009-2022 and organized into five sections – Spring, Summer, Babie Lato, Autumn and Winter. The seasons of poetry include reflections on nature, beauty, love, life, and spirituality. The focus is on positive emotions, learning to be calm and content, full of compassion and wisdom. It is a life-long quest, and these poems are an invitation.  Over 160 nature photographs illustrate the poems and bring them to life. US Trade (6 x 9 in / 152 x 229 mm), 184 Pages 85 poems, 160 color photographs, 6 portraits 

Maja Trochimczyk Reads "From Minium Chronicles", "Ocean of Jade" and "On Landscapes: A Guidebook" from the book on YouTube: https://youtu.be/m0i17jPRPLs

BUY IT NOW
ISBN 978-1-945938-49-8, color paperback, $48.  ISBN 978-1-945938-54-2  color hardcover, $68. ISBN 978-1-945938-52-8, eBook in ePub format, $10.

Today in the Forest - A Magical Poetry-and-Art Book by Cindy Rinne and Toti O'Brien (February 2021)

Picture
Moonrise Press announces the publication of Today in the Forest, a mysterious and inspired poetry and art book that will stir your imagination. This gem of a book has been created by Cindy Rinne, poet and fiber artist, and Toti O'Brien, artist, musician, and poet, with Cindy's poems and Toti's images in a delightful counterpoint of words and visions.
BUY IT NOW  ABOUT THIS BOOK
"I was mesmerized reading Today in the Forest. O’Brien and Rinne have created a luminous, mythical world inhabited by a Moon Goddess, wolf-people, and various imaginative delights. It is a world destroyed or horribly threatened, yet I felt protection, care, and survival here. Today in the Forest is a poetic journey illuminated with hope and memory."  
 ~ Stacy Russo, author of Love Activism and We Were Going to Change the World

As if in the forest all the problems of our world are being solved under the bark of trees, in an unseen parallel world, a precise and healing mythology is acted out by half human half visionary figures. Here, illustrated with powerful hand by someone who has been there, and witnessed, Toti O'Brien as master-artist, embodies the magical words of storyteller Cindy Rinne whose characters, her intimates, have allowed her to share their secrets at work. Cindy has recorded and given us a magic scroll. Toti has drawn and given us the map. We need to be here for hope. 
   ~ Kath Abela Wilson, leader of Poets on Site, author of Figures of Humor and Strange Beauty (Glass Lyre Press, 2019)
​

We Are Here: Village Poets Anthology edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Marlene Hitt, August 2020

Picture
​Edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Marlene Hitt, this anthology with work by over 80 American poets celebrates the tenth anniversary of Village Poets Monthly Readings, held since 2010 at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, California - a Historical Landmark in the City of Los Angeles. The Village Poets have also held events at the McGroarty Arts Center, the former home of the California Poet-Laureate in 1933-1944, John Steven McGroarty. His Poet-Laureate role inspired the local Poet-Laureate program, initiated in 1999. The anthology's editors are both former Poets-Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga: Marlene Hitt was the First, in 1999-2001 and Dr. Maja Trochimczyk served as the Sixth in 2010-2012 when the readings were initiated. The book consists of two parts: Guests and Featured Poets, represented by 1-3 poems each; and Poets-Laureate, with 10 poets, represented by 6-9 poems each. A list of Village Poets Readings, a brief history of the program, and biographies of the poets are included. Read the list of poets and bios of editors on Moonrise Press Blog.
ISBN 978-1-945938-39-9 - paperback, 290 pages, $22.00
ISBN 978-1-945938-40-5 - eBook in ePub format, $10.00

Poetry of Wisdom from a Lifetime, The Earth Time by Dr. Lloyd Hitt, December 2018

Picture
 
The Earth Time is a unique poetry collection documenting a lifetime of service of Dr. Lloyd Hitt, a Californian, pharmacist, USC graduate, Korean War veteran, writer, and community activist. The book of 46 poems is divided into five sections, focusing on: the contemplation of natural beauty and power (The Earth Time), dramatic experiences of WWII (The War Time), memories of the past that passed away too quickly (The Memory Time), milestones of a well-lived life (The Life Time), and the time of love, primarily for his wife, poet and historian Marlene Hitt (The Love Time). Dr. Hitt received many awards and honors for his tireless and dedicated community service.
    ISBN 9781945938320, paperback, $16
http://www.lulu.com/shop/lloyd-hitt/the-earth-time/paperback/product-23907339.html
     ISBN 978-1-945938-33-7, ebook, in ePub system, $10 
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-earth-time/24521745

Gardens of the Earth: According to Nature by Margaret Saine (September 2018)

Picture
Gardens of the Earth: According to Nature by Margaret Saine is a poetic exploration of nature tamed and shaped by humans, nature that in turn shapes the gardeners and gives them a purpose, a cause for action, and a reason for reflection.  Saine's inspired trip to the garden includes the seasons, rain and sunlight, multi-colored blossoms, and lots of birds. She shares her delight in gardens and gardening with a host of contemporary poets and friends and the renowned gardeners of the past. The book includes a separate section on trees, and is richly illustrated by Saine's own photographs, with the characteristic interplay of light and shadow, clouds and mists. Certain poems are translated into French, German, and Italian. 

BUY IT NOW:
ISBN 978-1-945938-25-2 (paperback), $18.00
ISBN 978-1-945938-26-9 (color  paperback), $40.00
ISBN 978-1-945938-27-6 (ebook in ePub format)​

​Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology, edited by Maja Trochimczyk & Kathi Stafford (May 2018)

Picture

Moonrise Press is pleased to announce the publication of Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology, edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford. Grateful Conversations is a portrait of a group of female poets from California, who come together each month to hone their craft and share their verse.  Known as Westside Women Writers and active as a group since 2008, they include Millicent Borges Accardi, Madeleine S. Butcher, Georgia Jones Davis, Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Kathi Stafford, Sonya Sabanac, Ambika Talwar and Maja Trochimczyk.  In the words of the WWW founder, Millicent Borges Accardi, this is “a community of women writers working together to support each other with strong attention to craft, to grow as writers and as people in community.” The volume, illustrated with photographs by the authors, includes poems written for seven workshops and self-portraits in poetry of the nine writers. ​​The workshops inclde such themes as: writing on a prompt, ekphrastic poetry (inspired by Van Gogh, ancient Greek sculpture, and contemporary art at the Broad Museum), site visits (Norton Simon Museum, Getty Villa, The Broad, and Museum of Jurassic Technology), grandparents and rivers. The table of contents with a list of poems is posted on the Moonrise Press Blog.  
May 2018, Paperback, 280 pp., black/white illustrations, ISBN  978-1-945938-22-1 

_______________________________________________________________________________________
​Explore Poetry, Literature and Painting with Margaret Saine in Lit Angels, Published in February 2017

Picture
Published in February 2017, Margaret Saine's ​Lit Angels (=Literature Angels ~ Angels of Light) is a collection of poetry inspired by literature and the arts. Written in English, the volume includes several translations into German, Arabic, French and Italian.  

Poet Mani Suri considers this book as an "elegant, wise, and worldly oeuvre - a distilled reflection of her sagesse and sophistication."  

​Virginia Jasmin Pasalo observes that "like her photography, Ute’s poems breathe movement, shadow and light that immediately transports the reader to the experience of moving within the social fabric of her woven words."  The book of 96 pages presents over 70 poems and is illustrated with 14 photographs. 

Available as: Paperback, ISBN  978-1-945938-02-3, $15.00; Color Paperback, ISBN 978-1-945938-04-7, $35.00, and EBook, ISBN 978-1-945938-05-4, $10.00. ​

_________________________________________________________________________________________
The Rainy Bread. Poems from Exile by Maja Trochimczyk Honor Polish Victims of War and Repressions

Picture
The Rainy Bread: Poems from Exile by Maja Trochimczyk includes 30 poems about forgotten stories of Poles living in the Eastern Borderlands of Kresy, who were killed, deported, imprisoned, or oppressed after the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939.  Some of these brief portraits capture the trauma and resilience, ordeals and miraculous survival stories of the author’s immediate family.  Their experiences of displacement, hunger, cold, and poverty during the war are typical of Polish civilians. including those Poles that were deported to Siberia, beyond the Arctic Circle, or to Kazakhstan; who later left the Soviet Union with the Second Corps of the Polish Army under General Władysław Anders; were transported to refugee camps in India or Africa; and ended up in Argentina, Canada, Australia or the U.S. The book is a companion to Slicing the Bread: Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2014), with which it shares some poems, including vignettes from the author’s childhood in Warsaw, permeated by the strange rhetoric of the Polish People’s Republic, and still overshadowed by the war.
The second, expanded edition (2021), The Rainy Bread: More Poems from Exile, includes 60 poems and 14 pages of photographs and portraits. 
BUY IT NOW: The Rainy Bread. Poems from Exile. ISBN 978-1-945938-00-9, Paperback, 64 pages, $10.00 plus shipping
​BUY IT NOW: The Rainy Bread. More Poems from Exile. ISBN 978-1-945938-47-4 Paperback. color photos, 124 pp. $40.00 plus shipping. BUY IT NOW: ISBN 978-1-945938-01-6   EBook, expanded version $8.00​

______________________________________________________________________________________
Inspirations and Meditations in Into Light by Maja Trochimczyk (July 2016)

Picture
This poetry and meditation collection presents  36 poems and 12 "incantations" that focus on the intertwined spiritual concepts of Light and Love. The poems, initially written within the Catholic mystical tradition of contemplation and adoration of the Divine presence, gradually evolved to encompass a broader scope of spiritual insights, without losing the main focus: reaching out in Love to the One Light, the Source of All. The simple and repetitive meditations and incantations are meant to inspire, uplift, and fill the heart with Light and Love. The book includes poems for group recitation, meditations on light, brief affirmation, meditations on energy centers (chakras), poems about the Cardinal Virtues, about finding love and peace in the busy world, about Eliah, Madonna, whales, the Universe, trees, streams, midnight sky, and more...

Available as a Full Color Paperback of 84 pages in a standard trade size 6' by 9' (ISBN 978-1-945938-14-6 $40.00) and as an E-Book in the EPUB Format, ISBN 978-1-945938-15-3, $10.00).

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Mud in Magic by Beverly M. Collins Finds Humor and Delight in the Seasons of Life (May 2015)

Picture
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. Her works appear in a growing number of publications, such as the California Quarterly, the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, anthologies by Poets on Site, and more.  
Website with more info: moonrisepress.com/mud-in-magic-by-beverly-m-collins.html 
BUY IT NOW:
Paperback: 96 pp. ISBN 978-0-996398-1-0-7 , $15.00.
E-Book:  $8.00, ISBN 978-0-996398-1-1-4.
Picture
______________________________________________________________________________________
Clocks and Water Drops by Marlene Hitt - Poetry of Wisdom and Experience (April 2014)
"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."
Website with more info: http://moonrisepress.com/clocks-and-water-drops-by-marlene-hitt.html 
Paperback edition, $15.00 (+S&H), 118 pp.: ISBN 978-0-9819693-5-0. Published in April 2015.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

"Clocks and Water Drops" is a book of treasured gifts packed in memories and reflections as tasty as homemade bread, fanciful as a rose petal salad and healing as warm camphor oil on a child’s skin. Marlene Hitt’s astute and thoughtful voice paints a world as gentle as lamb’s wool and precious as a girl’s fisrt pony. Open this cedar chest of poems, don its knitted socks and prepare to chase the moon through love and time." 
~ Jack Cooper, Author, "Across my Silence"

"Marlene Hitt is a poet beyond measure… she holds each thing to her eye and finds inner correspondences. She finds in the mind - an empty glue, a "back alley" and wonders what words to write, as we all do, on a blank page, or “the bronze grave marker” she buys for herself. Each of her poems works on several levels, and almost always ends with a very interesting surprise or revelation. The significance of each detail is stunning and inspiring. She sees objects as possessing uncanny power. She recalls her feeling that the clock pendulum in the house has captured time with its sound, and stolen it from her own grandmother. By her confident and consistent phrasing and exacting vision, she follows her own life from early childhood to now. She calls upon us as readers to look at her life, and back into our own for the metaphors inherent and active… alive, in all of us today." 
~ Kath Abela Wilson, Poet, Artist, founder of Poets on Site

​______________________________________________________________________________________
The Desert Hat - by Ed Rosenthal, a Unique Story of Survival in the Mojave Desert (August 2013)

Picture
This volume of poetry was inspired by a six-and-a-half-day ordeal of Ed Rosenthal, a Poet-Broker, who survived alone after being lost in the Mojave Desert in September 2010.  An experienced hiker, he unexpectedly veered far away from his usual route and could not find his way back. He found refuge in Salvation Canyon where he was several times missed by search-and-rescue aircraft and helicopters. Finally, miraculously, he was found by San Bernardino Sheriff's Deputies.  The wry, surreal, and reflective poems in The Desert Hat: Survival Poems describe the spiritual trajectory of a survivor living through a close encounter with death, starting from alienation in a corporate urban environment and ending with the post-trauma reflections about life and natural environment.
           The book consists of 36 poems organized in four sections, reflecting the distinct stages in the spiritual and personal journey, from getting off track, through searching for a way back, hallucinations in a hostile desert environment, finding shelter in the shade of Salvation Canyon, being rescued, and experiencing the world after the return from the brink of death.  The title alludes to a canvas hat that Rosenthal used as a notebook and helped the lost poet control his thoughts, capture emotions, and write down his last will and a farewell to his wife and daughter. This is Ed Rosenthal's first book-length publication. Paperback print edition: ISBN 978-0-9819693-7-4, 74 pages, $15.00.

ABOUT THIS BOOK
​
"Just over three years ago, after making a wrong turn on a hike, Ed Rosenthal, The Poet Broker of Downtown L.A., was lost for 6 days in Joshua Tree National Park. ... The temperature climbed above 100 degrees every day that week. Miraculously, Ed survived. Now, three years later, he has processed the experience. Beautifully. Ed has just published The Desert Hat, Survival Poems (Moonrise Press). And reading it is an astonishing experience in its own right. If Ed has just recounted his dramatic story, that would have been a good read. But Ed is a poet. He gropes for elusive meanings in his transformational desert suffering. Recurring images broaden into symbols, link, and elevate the book into, essentially, one extended poem." 
      ~ Jack Skelley, November 2013, http://jsprla.com/updates/2013/11/13/surviving-was-a-big-deal-for-downtowns-poet-broker

In "The Desert Hat," Los Angeles poet/real estate broker Ed Rosenthal presents the mythopoetic journey through his real-life experience of being lost for 6 days in remote canyons of the Mojave Desert's Joshua Tree National Park in S eptember, 2010. "The Desert Hat" delves deeply into the wildest and unpredictable heart of the Mojave into a storied landscape that Rosenthal renders as both recognizable to the reader and also deeply specific to his solitary and unanticipated experience, and in these poems, creates an empathetic and spiritually-affirming desert landscape that resonates within all of our desert hearts. 
    ~ Ruth Nolan. Professor of English @ College of the Desert, California desert poet, writer, editor, conservationist & scholar

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/ into 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. 
     ~ Elena Karina Byrne, Executive Director of AVK Arts, author of The Flammable Bird Masque and Squander

Meditations on Divine Names  - A Multi-faith Poetry Anthology edited by Maja Trochimczyk (July 2012)

"Meditations on Divine Names" is an anthology of contemporary poetry, featuring 140 poems by 64 poets associated with diverse spiritual traditions. Their poems represent: various branches of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Sukiyo Mahikari, and ancient Greek, Egyptian, Hawaiian, and Slavic religions. The book is divided into ten sections: Naming, Names, Earth, Water, Air, Fire, He, She, Being, and Loving. The following poets are represented: MJ Adams, Nicholas Alexander, Catherine Auman, Jon B., Marcielle Brandler, Sharon Chmielarz, Joe Decenzo, Carol Dorf, Kate Hallett Dayton, Carl Estrin, Amy Falvey, Elsa S. Frausto, Bill Gillard, Michael Graber, John Guzlowski, Peter J. Harris, Carl Hitchens, Marlene Hitt, G. Bennett Humphrey, Oriana Ivy, Mitch James, Roy Jacobstein, Lois P. Jones, James Levin, Terranda King, Alexis Krasilovsky, Leonard Kress, Sharmagne Leland-St.John, Rick Lupert, Radomir Voytech Luza, Czeslaw Milosz, Rajiv Mohabir, Geoshino Ollscia, Shirley Dunn Perry, Nils Peterson, Lenora Popa, Kate Robinson, Susan Rogers, Mary Kay Rummel, Nicholas Samaras, Peter Shefler, Marian Kaplun Shapiro, Dorothy Skiles, Lee M. Sloca, J.D. Smith, Barry Spacks, Odarka Polanskyj Stockert, Charles A. Swanson, Taoli-Ambika Talwar, Judith Terzi, Maja Trochimczyk, Ann Tweedy, Davi Walders, Martin Willitts Jr., and Kathabela Wilson.      BUY IT NOW: ISBN  978-0-9819693-8-1, $21.00 

ABOUT THIS BOOK
Meditations on Divine Names offers rich poetic material selected and collected with great sensitivity, by an editor for whom religious belief was not a given, but rather the result of conscious search.  Its 140 poems by sixty-four authors represent a variety of religious faiths.  The title of this anthology points to some crucial concepts.  In several world mythologies, the act of naming, the act that involves language, takes on the power of creation. One can certainly find parallels here with poetic acts of creation. Likewise, many of the poems chosen by Trochimczyk represent thoughtful meditations, prayers or thoughtful incantations that allow the reader a total immersion in the spiritual and move the reader to the emotional response to, and relationship with, the divine.” 
                                                                                   ~  Dr. Grazyna Kozaczka, The Polish Review, vol. 58 no. 4 (2013): 109 

"Meditations on Divine Names has something for everyone.  Maybe it’s due to the openness of its title and the way the book is sectioned, easy access to themes: water, being, loving, She, He, fire, earth, air, names, naming.  Poets respond from their own hopes, often poignantly wry, and their experience, not excluding the Nones, in all faiths and religions, enhancing belief with the powers of imagination and Earth’s beauty."                                                                ~ Sharon Chmielarz, January 21, 2013

"The poets belong to different religions or religious denominations. They see the manifestations of the divine in many aspects of life – personal prayer, religious ceremonies, singing of psalms, family relationships, nature, sun, sky, bread making, loving, and love making. They admire the colors of the sky and the liquid nourishment of water. The clarity of mountain air and the gentleness of human touch. From the four letters of YHWH to Lada or Pele, the anthology catalogs some unusual divine names. Poets reflect on the act of naming, the facts of knowing and unknowing of our God(s). They give testimony to their hopes and beliefs, and share what they find beautiful and inspirational, or, sometimes, disturbing. There is darkness around and death, but the poets look for ways to ascend above, to illumination."                                                     ~   Deacon Jim on the Deacon's Blog, August 2012

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

​Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse - An Anthology Edited by Maja Trochimczyk (February 2010)

Picture
​An anthology of poetry edited by Maja Trochimczyk. This volume celebrates the 200th birth anniversary of a Polish pianist-composer, Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) in a selection of 123 poems by 92 poets. The highlights include the first English translation of Norwid's Fortepian Szopena by Leonard Kress. Published in February 2010. ISBN 978-0-9819693-0-5. Read more about this anthology, or see its Table of Contents (Word doc). Reviewed by John Z. Guzlowski in The Cosmopolitan Review 2 no. 1 (Spring 2010), with a selection of poems. Other reviews were published in International World Literature, Polish-American Journal, and the Clockwise Cat.
ABOUT THIS BOOK

GRAZYNA KOZACZKA, DECEMBER 2013: "The book's striking title brings the reader to Trochimczyk's own poem, "A Study with Cherries," where the musical motifs of one of Chopin's etudes transport the poet across space and time to the cherry orchard of her grandparents in Poland and offer her peace and fulfillment.... In Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse, just a glance at the chapter headings identifies the poetic interests in Chopin. Thus poets find inspiration in a particular musical genre such as waltzes, mazurkas, or nocturnes; they become fascinated by Chopin's life, illness, and death, and his relationship to George Sand; and, finally, they explore their own emotional responses to hearing or playing Chopin's music...."  (The Polish Review, 58 no. 4, 2013).
CHRISTOPHER WOODS, FEBRUARY 2011: "For those who have been moved by the music of Fryderyk Chopin, this new international anthology will be a treat... One breathtaking aspect of the anthology is the diversity of voices, both stylistically and geographically... [Among] the striking aspects of the anthology is the way in which the editor, Polish born Maja Trochimczyk, arranges the various sections, not only by musical forms, but also into sections like beauty and death, words that often come to mind when considering Chopin's life, his passions and his early demise." Christopher Woods in Contemporary World Literature no. 5 (February 2011).

JOHN Z. GUZLOWSKI, FEBRUARY 2010: "Maja Trochimczyk's Chopin with Cherries... is a masterful celebration of this composer and the complex range of emotions, impressions, memories, and dreams his music evokes... Finally, let me say that I cannot remember reading an anthology of poems centered around a single-theme that I liked more. The poems Maja Trochimczyk has gathered together to commemorate Chopin's 200th birthday are inspiring and exhilarating, as I have already noted, and - I don't know how else to say this - fun to read." John Z. Guzlowski in The Cosmopolitan Review 2 no. 1 (Spring 2010).

Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden - by Maja Trochimczyk (October 2008)

 A book of poetry and photography by Maja Trochimczyk. This poetry collection describes a spiritual evolution, symbolized by the appearances of six angels: Amor, the angel of romance; Eros, the angel of desire; Eloe, the angel of sorrow; Thanatos, the angel of death; Ellenai, the angel of consolation; and Sophia, the angel of wisdom. Nature mysticism illustrated in vignettes of poems and photos. Published in 2008. Read a sample here.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

"Rarely does one find a book of poetry which holds together as well asMiriam's Iris. Although presented as a collection of individual poems, it reads like it was composed as a whole, as a single poem of multiple parts. . .Miriam's Iris is a strong demonstration of how poetry can evoke emotion without getting bogged down in the details of one's affairs. Along the way it provides some wisdom about finding one's place, accepting what one is given."
                                                                                                      ~ G. Murray Thomas in Poetix.net, Feburary 2010
_____________________________________________________________

​ONLINE CHAPBOOKS & ALBUMS

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
All photographs and information (c) 2008-2020 by Moonrise Press, Los Angeles. All rights reserved by Moonrise Press. Distribution and sales by lulu.com and its partners.