Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden 
Poetry by Maja Trochimczyk
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The genesis of this poetry collection includes years of travelling and an internal journey leading to a serene California garden. The map of the stages on the journey is created 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 timeless wisdom. Eros and Thanatos are Greek twins, Amor is their baby cousin. Eloe died of sorrow and Ellenai carried her on his wings in Juliusz Slowacki’s romantic drama, Anhelli. Sophia needs no introductions, since she is the wise Queen, the best friend of Rumi and all Christian mystics. Maja Trochimczyk is a Polish-American poet, music historian and non-profit director based in Los Angeles.

G. Murray Thomas 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)

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Ute Margaret Saine about this book

Maja Trochimczyk is a well-known and widely published Southern California poet and musicologist, having from 2010 to 2012 also been the Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. The title of her book of poems promises a joyous stroll among various gardens, each marked and separated by sparse monochrome images of trees, shrubs, and clouds, which the author photographed at interestingly abstract angles. Miriam is a reference to Solomon’s beloved in the magnificent garden of the Song of Songs, with the Northern iris substituting for the Mediterranean rose. In a double reference, Miriam’s iris also refers to the iris of her eye, “her gaze” [1].
 
And as gardens always have in world mythology, the ones of this poem exhibit a profound meaning shrouded in floral and arboreal beauty. Each garden represents, or is represented by, an angel, from Amor to Sophia, standing for the sixtuple sequence of Romance, Desire, Grief, Death, Peace, and Wisdom. Each of these cycles is again represented by six poems, like pearls on a necklace. These six allegorical gardens, or in modern terms, emotions and stages of life, represent a progression in which, significantly, death is not the end, but is overcome by the last two, the transcendent and still deeply utopian personal visions of Peace and Wisdom.
 
The poet concludes each of the six sections with an Interlude, a transition path into the next garden, as it were: the ending becomes a new beginning. These interludes remind me of the musical “Promenades” that Mussorgsky interposes between the sound paintings of his “Pictures at an Exhibition.” In turn, each interlude at the end of the garden is followed by a free-flowing tanka or haiku-like text in Italics titled “In Passing,” flanked on each side by blank pages, that is, open on each side, to past and future, as if to epitomize the open-endedness and volatility of poetry and the human experience.