Wednesday, 31 August 2016
Tuesday, 30 August 2016
Monday, 29 August 2016
Sunday, 28 August 2016
How to Be an American Writer, Part 5: Thornton Wilder as a Populist
There is another mode of American literary populism is not so much about making the ordinary person larger than life, as in Walt Whitman’s poetry. This other strain of American populist is concerned with finding the pathos in small, everyday moments. Maybe my favorite U.S. populist in this vein is Thornton Wilder, author of the play Our Town, and the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, among other works.
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| Thornton Wilder |
In addition to Our Town, which beautifully celebrates meaningful moments in small-town American life, Wilder wrote a wonderful one-act play called The Happy Journey from Trenton to Camden. How much more mundane can you get than a family road trip from one city in New Jersey to another? The family members are traveling to visit the eldest daughter, who lives with her husband in Camden. En route, the family talks about the most banal topics—billboards they see with ads for spaghetti and cigarettes. They debate whether to make a pit stop at a gas station, whether the son is old enough to take a paper route. The mother is the loudest, most uneducated, obnoxious character. When the family finally gets to the home of the fully grown daughter, it’s the usual small talk—how much the kids have grown, how nice her house looks. Can life get any more boring?
Then suddenly, Wilder has the mother send the other family members off on various errands. The mom is now alone with her grown, married daughter.
You can see a video of part of a production of the play here. The scene I’m going to discuss starts right after the 2:40 second mark and goes till about 4:07.
The married daughter unexpectedly breaks down and starts sobbing, and the mother folds her in her arms, so we see that the daughter is still her child, even if she is fully grown and living on her own. The audience finds out the real purpose of the car trip—the mother has come to console her daughter on her recent miscarriage. The mom had missed her chance to do this when the daughter was in the hospital right after she lost the baby—a gruff doctor had sent the mother away. This moment when the mother finally gets to soothe her daughter in Wilder’s play is so surprising, so poignant. We realize that all those mundane details are just the wrapper, the outside of life, and inside are the incredibly moving moments that sustain us.
Other recent posts about writing topics:
How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry?
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Praise and Lament
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry?
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Praise and Lament
Saturday, 27 August 2016
Friday, 26 August 2016
How to Be an American Writer, Part 4: Populists and Walt Whitman
The next blog in my series on approaches that U.S. writers take to American society is about a literary stance that is in some ways the diametrical opposite of the expatriate, the subject of my last two posts. I call this type of writer the populist. The populist writes about moments in the American experience that convey a deeper truth. He or she is looking for the inspiration and epiphanies that exist even in seemingly mundane lives or moments.
The poet Walt Whitman was a populist writer who believed that American life was the greatest possible inspiration for literature. In his preface to his book, Leaves of Grass, Whitman wrote, “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” Whitman adds, “…the genius of the United States is… always most in the common people.”
The poet Walt Whitman was a populist writer who believed that American life was the greatest possible inspiration for literature. In his preface to his book, Leaves of Grass, Whitman wrote, “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” Whitman adds, “…the genius of the United States is… always most in the common people.”
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| Walt Whitman |
Whitman took his own advice in choosing subjects for his writing, for instance in “I Hear America Singing”:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
I like to imagine Walt Whitman coming up with the idea for this poem by taking a walk in the morning around his neighborhood in Brooklyn, hearing two or three people singing as they work. From that day on, I can imagine that Whitman was alert to the poetic possibilities of people singing, and he collected bits and pieces of other moments to create this collage of different American laborer-singers.
How beautiful that he starts his poem with, “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.” We don’t often think of the word “carols” outside of the phrase “Christmas carols,” but it does have a more universal meaning of “song” that Whitman draws on, even as he assigns the sacred connotations of “carol” to work songs, as opposed to religious hymns. Who is singing? The entire continent of America, as though it were a giant folk hero, a Paul Bunyan or John Henry, but with a song instead of a hammer or axe. I like the inverted syntax of “the varied carols I hear,” putting the subject and verb of that clause after the object of the verb, the carols. Beginning and ending the first line with the words “I hear” is a formal rhetorical device that Whitman transforms by using it nonchalantly and making it feel like the most natural, American speech.
How beautiful that he starts his poem with, “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.” We don’t often think of the word “carols” outside of the phrase “Christmas carols,” but it does have a more universal meaning of “song” that Whitman draws on, even as he assigns the sacred connotations of “carol” to work songs, as opposed to religious hymns. Who is singing? The entire continent of America, as though it were a giant folk hero, a Paul Bunyan or John Henry, but with a song instead of a hammer or axe. I like the inverted syntax of “the varied carols I hear,” putting the subject and verb of that clause after the object of the verb, the carols. Beginning and ending the first line with the words “I hear” is a formal rhetorical device that Whitman transforms by using it nonchalantly and making it feel like the most natural, American speech.
Whitman is the essential populist, believing in the goodness and beauty of the common man or woman. He celebrated the dignity of enslaved Africans in his poem “I Sing the Body Electric”:
A man’s body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.
Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it…
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.
Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it…
Whitman’s brand of populism is to describe the workingman or woman as embued with dignity, even divinity, almost larger than life. In the next blog, I’ll talk about another form of American populism, one that celebrates the small moments in life.
Other recent posts about writing topics:
Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Use Back to School Activities That Help Teach Character Traits
It's time for back to school and that means planning fun back to school get to know you activities that students haven't done before. Plus, the first week activities you plan set the tone for your year. I want students to know that they will be working together, doing projects and activities with other students and collaborating. It's important to establish rapport and teach students how they are expected to treat each other, with dignity and respect. We also value and teach character traits.
On day one I want students to be see what their year will be like. I want them working together, talking, and getting to know each other. Yes, I teach routines and rules, too, but I want students interacting. I want to hear laughter. I want to see smiles on faces. I want new friendships to blossom. I want students to accept each other. Through play, this process begins.
I recently designed a great set of activities that can be used for the first four days of school. They best part is they are Cootie Catchers. Who doesn't love making and playing with the? Best of all, they let the teacher talk about four character traits each day so by the end of the fourth day, 16 traits have been discussed as a class. Teachers can reinforce why the traits are important to creating a positive class culture. The first Cootie Catcher gets students paired up and allows for the game playing to be non-threatening because the questions students ask each other are non-personal. Each of the next Cootie Catchers gradually ask more questions that are more and more designed for students to share more about themselves. Hopefully by the end of the week students will have new friends with things in common.
Here's some examples of the questions designed to gradually allow students to become comfortable sharing.
This activity is designed so students can play the game with one to four partners so that over the course of the first week, students know at least four students really well.
What are your favorite back to school ice breakers and get to know you activities? Have a great school year!
On day one I want students to be see what their year will be like. I want them working together, talking, and getting to know each other. Yes, I teach routines and rules, too, but I want students interacting. I want to hear laughter. I want to see smiles on faces. I want new friendships to blossom. I want students to accept each other. Through play, this process begins.
Here's some examples of the questions designed to gradually allow students to become comfortable sharing.
Cootie Catcher #1 - These are a few of my favorite things :
- What is your favorite food?
Cootie Catcher #2 - Get to Know Me!
- Do you celebrate holidays? If so, what’s your favorite?
Cootie Catcher #3 - More About Me!
- What do you like to do for fun on weekends?
Cootie Catcher #4 - Wishes, Hopes and Dream
- What is one thing you wish people knew about you?
What are your favorite back to school ice breakers and get to know you activities? Have a great school year!
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तेरी सांस के साथ चलती है मेरी हर धड़कन , और तुम पूछते हो मुझे याद किया या नही
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Monday, 22 August 2016
Back to School One Day Savings
Teachers, save 28% today only on all of my teaching materials in my TpT store!
Use the code: oneday at checkout!
Have an amazing school year!
Sunday, 21 August 2016
How to Be an American Writers, Part 3: U.S. Expatriate Writers (continued)
The roster of U.S. expatriate writers is a distinguished one. It includes Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Paul Bowles, Jane Bowles, Natalie Barney, Djuna Barnes, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Baldwin, and Chester Himes. In the 1920s and 30s, almost the entire U.S. literary world decamped to Paris and the French Riviera, where F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and many others spent a good part of those decades. Of course, part of their interest in the urbane, sophistication of Europe might have had to do with the fact that one could drink alcohol legally there, which was not true in the U.S after the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1920, the beginning of the Prohibition era. Another reason behind the expatriate lifestyle may have been the fact that it was much cheaper to live as an artist in Europe than in the U.S. in the 1920s.
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| Djuna Barnes |
One interesting undercurrent in expatriate writing is the high percentage of gays and lesbians among the authors who left the U.S. Western Europe has long been ahead of our country in its embrace, or at least tolerance, of gay and lesbian lifestyles, and of LGB subject matter in literature. A majority of the expatriate writers I’ve mentioned have been gay or lesbian or bisexual, including Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Natalie Barney, and Henry James.
Even though the U.S. has become somewhat more sophisticated, the expatriate strain in American writing continues to this day. The author David Sedaris is a contemporary expatriate writer. Sedaris, who is openly gay, has purchased and renovated a cottage in Sussex in the U.K. and often writes critically of American naiveté, comparing it unfavorably with English and continental sophistication. All of this might start to sound familiar to those who read my last blog, which discussed Henry James.
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| David Sedaris |
Here’s David Sedaris’s critique of the attire of American travelers, from his essay “Standing By,” which appeared in The New Yorker, and which you can hear him read in his audiobook, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls:
“…everywhere I go, someone in an eight-dollar T-shirt is whipping out a cell phone and delivering the fine print of his or her delay. One can’t help but listen in, but then my focus shifts and I find myself staring. I should be used to the way Americans dress when travelling, yet still it manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge, saying, ‘Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!’”
I’m always reminded when I take an airplane about how we Americans look when we travel. To be frank, it’s often not a pretty sight. Compared to U.S. citizens, Europeans and other nationalities are much better dressed and show much more respect for others in the way they present themselves, both in airports and in general. That European savoir faireis hard to find in the United States, and it’s not just a question of wardrobe. It’s also an outlook on life, an appreciation of beauty and elegance. I think the hunger for those qualities is part of the motivation of the expatriate American writer.
Other recent posts about writing topics:
How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry?
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Praise and Lament
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry?
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Praise and Lament
Friday, 19 August 2016
"The Rainy Bread: Poems from Exile" ... of Poles Deported to Siberia and Displaced by War
by Maja Trochimczyk. Moonrise Press, August 2016
Moonrise Press announces the publication of “The Rainy Bread: Poems of Exile” by Maja Trochimczyk. This volume 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. Her maternal family comes from Baranowicze and the surrounding area near Adam Mickiewicz’s Nowogródek and the mythical lake of Świteź in what is now Belarus. Their experiences of displacement, hunger, cold, and poverty during the war are typical of Polish civilians.
These fictionalized memories are coupled with depictions of survival of other Poles deported to Siberia, the Arctic Circle, or Kazakhstan; who 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, yet still overshadowed by the war.
≡ ABOUT THIS BOOK ≡
Unwavering in its honesty, The Rainy Bread is a thought-provoking look at a brutal chapter in history: the Soviet occupation of Poland during World War II and the deportations and repressions that took place in the country's Easter Borderlands, known as Kresy. Trochimczyk gives a public face to this history but also reveals the private heart of a family that endures despite horrific loss. With simple language and stark imagery, these poems create a powerful testimony and bear witness to the hate that destroys, to the truth that restores, and to the poetic vision that honors our common humanity.
≡ Linda Nemec Foster, author of Amber Necklace from Gdańsk (LSU Press),
winner of the Creative Arts Award from the Polish American Historical Association
Maja Trochimczyk’s poems draw you into a bestial, almost inconceivable history. Using objects—bread, potatoes, trapdoors, high heels—she guides you through an experience with the madness of World War II and its aftermath when a dictator is judged worse or better by how many fewer millions he has slaughtered. This book needed to be written. This is a fascinating, tragic, and instructive time in history which should not me neglected. Trochimczyk doesn’t lecture; you are riveted by the power of her poems; their narratives flow from her hands as if a Babcia were still guiding them. And maybe she was. You will remember the taste of this book.
≡ Sharon Chmielarz, author of Love from the Yellowstone Trail
≡ LIST OF POEMS ≡
≡ PART I ≡ DESTINATIONS ≡ 1
1. What to Carry ≡ 2
2. Starlight ≡ 3
3. Charlie, Who Did Not Cross ≡ 4
4. Five Countries in Venice ≡ 6
5. Eyes on the Road ≡ 8
6. The Baton ≡ 9
7. Diamonds ≡ 10
≡ ≡ PART II ≡ THERE AND NOWHERE ≡ 11
The Odds ≡ 12
Wołyń ≡ 13
1 Kołyma ≡ 15
Amu Darya ≡ 16
1 Shambhala ≡ 18
1 Reflection ≡ 20
1 A Piece of Good Advice to Stuff in the Hole in the Wall ≡ 21
A Pilot in Pakistan ≡ 22
. Under African Sky ≡ 23
≡ ≡ ≡ PART III ≡ THE HUNGER DAYS ≡ 25
Kasha ≡ 26
The Trap Door ≡ 27
Slicing the Bread ≡ 29
Peeling the Potatoes ≡ 30
≡ ≡ ≡ ≡ PART IV ≡ THERE AND BACK ≡ 33
2 Of Trains and Tea ≡ 34
Once Upon a Time in Baranowicze ≡ 35
Ciocia Tonia ≡ 37
Asters ≡ 39
No Chicken ≡ 41
The Coat ≡ 43
Short Legs ≡ 44
Short Legs ≡ 44
Standing Guard ≡ 46
Losing Irena ≡ 47
Language ≡ 48
≡ INTRODUCTION ≡
- My previous book of war-themed poems, Slicing the Bread (Finishing Line Press, 2014) was prefaced with a rhetorical question: “If I were born in Warsaw, a city that lost 700,000 of its inhabitants, shouldn’t I at least try to remember some of them? The 450,000 Jews and 250,000 non-Jewish Poles died before October 1944, when everyone left in Warsaw after the Uprising was expelled to deportee or labor camps, while the buildings of an empty city were dynamited into a sea of ruins.” Then, the Soviets came…
- This chapbook, written for the Kresy-Siberia Conference in Warsaw in September 2016, takes the story further east and around the world as it traces the displacement of deportees, their ordeals and miraculous survival stories. After the war, my parents, Aleksy Trochimczyk (25 September 1927 – 11 May 2001) and Henryka Teresa Trochimczyk, née Wajszczuk (16 December 1929 – 4 July 2013) came from provincial villages and towns in the Easter Borderlands, or Kresy, to study engineering at the Polytechnical University of Warsaw. They met while picking bricks off the ruined streets of Warsaw (“The Coat”). My father’s family was Belarussian, with roots in the Ukraine and beyond; during the war, they were hungry and impoverished, but stayed on the family farm in Bielewicze, now in Poland.
- My mother’s family of Polish gentry and city folk living in Baranowicze and the surrounding area near Adam Mickiewicz’s Nowogródek and the mythical lake of Świteź in what is now Belarus, was particularly affected by the deportations: the families Wajszczuk, Wasiuk, Ignatowicz, Gliński, Hordziejewski…Six poems are based on the memories of grandmothers and great aunts, my mother and father. “Slicing the Bread” documents my Mom’s obsession with saving and hoarding food, due to the years of war-time hunger. “The Trap Door” commemorates my Dad’s family survival in an isolated hamlet of Bielewicze near Gródek Białostocki. It was so close to the forest, it was constantly scoured for food by the “partisans” – but also fed the Germans, and the Soviets when they came. I admired the courage and resilience of my Belorussian Babcia, Nina Trochimczyk, née Niegierysz.
- “The Odds” is about my Mom’s uncles, Catholic priests. Father Karol Wajszczuk (1887 – 1942) was a prisoner of the Lublin Castle since April 1940. He was moved to Sachsenhausen and then to Dachau, on December 14, 1940. He died on 28 May 1942 in the Castle Hartheim: in a gas chamber, originally built to exterminate the disabled in the Euthanasia program and later used to kill prisoners from Dachau. His father, Piotr, was the brother of Franciszek, the patriarch of the Wajszczuk-Trochimczyk family branch, and the father of Stanisław Marcin Wajszczuk (1895-1973), my grandfather from the village of Trzebieszów in Podlasie. Father Feliks Wajszczuk (b. 1902 – d. 1973), Karol’s cousin, was in Sachenhausen, then in Dachau since 14 December 1940. He was liberated by Americans on 25 May 1945 and spent the rest of his life in a monastery in France.
- In my poem, Karol and Feliks are paired up with another set of brothers, Artur Gold (1897-1943) and Henryk Gold (1902-1977), Jewish composers and musicians from Warsaw. Henryk survived by joining the musicians of the Second Corps of the Polish Army commanded by General Władysław Anders (1892-1970). Artur died in Treblinka. The group of Jewish musicians included Henryk Wars (Henry Vars, 1902-1977, “The Baton”) and many other survivors.
- My Grandma and her sisters, my Mom’s maternal aunts, appear in several poems. Babcia Maria Anna Wajszczuk, born Wasiuk (1906-1973) in Baranowicze, wore her head high in the peasant village (“No Chicken”) and taught me the skill of “Peeling the Potatoes.”
- Ciocia Tonia, or Antonina Glińska lost her husband to a Soviet bullet, and survived exile to Siberia, to return to Poland in 1954. Alas, her sons did not do as well: the older lost his life, drowning in Yenisey, the younger, indoctrinated in Soviet schools, lost his soul to a career in economics, the government, and PZPR.
- Aunt Antonina is commemorated in “Ciocia Tonia” and her sister, Ciocia Irena, married name de Belina, appears in “Losing Irena.” She was deported with her whole family, and came to America as an orphan, whose path from Siberia through Iran, Switzerland to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico never ceased to amaze me.
- Ciocia Jadzia, married name Hordziejewska, was resettled with her noble-born husband, Dominik in the early 1950s. They were sent from their estate near the lake Świteź to a drab settlement house in Gdańsk-Oliwa, emptied of its German inhabitants (who, in turn, were resettled further West). Their portraits are in “Asters.” More details may be found on the family tree, www.wajszczuk.v.pl, compiled by Waldemar Wajszczuk and Barbara Miszta, née Wajszczuk of Trzebieszów.
- In addition to these rich and varied reprinted four poems based on my own childhood experiences in Warsaw, the capital of the socialist Polish People’s Republic where I went to school and wondered about the shadow of the war: “Short Legs,” “The Coat,” “Standing Guard,” and “What to Carry.” Even though these poems focus on my native Warsaw, the intergenerational trauma that they express stems from my Mom’s experience escaping from Soviet-occupied Baranowicze back to German-occupied Poland.
- A sizeable portion of new poems commemorate deportees to Siberia and Central Asia. “Eyes on the Road” is based on an episode in the life of Roma King, author of Footsteps in the Snow: A True Story of One Family's Journey Out of Siberia (2010). Carlos (or Charlie) Stalgis (“Charlie, Who Did Not Cross”) was born in Argentina and his family took the unsuccessful trek to the Polish border from the environs of Baranowicze (“Charlie, Who Did Not Cross”), while my grandparents, Mom, and uncle made it across the river Bug (“Starlight”).
- Baranowicze was also where the father of Lucyna Przasnyski had his roots (“Once Upon a Time in Baranowicze”). As a child deportee, Andrzej Dąbrowa took the infernal boat-ride along Amu Darya to the Aral Sea. Zofia Janczur had diamonds hidden in her shoes that saved the life of her whole family. Roma King waited for her Dad to come and get them, and he did (“Eyes on the Road”).
- I heard their stories during an event about Sybiracy organized for the Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club in Los Angeles by Dorota Olszewska, herself an heir of Polish deportees to Siberia, repatriated to Szczecin (Stettin). On a sunny afternoon of June 5, 2016, they were joined by other survivors, Zofia Cybulska-Adamowicz, Wiesław Adamowicz and Elżbieta Nowicka in revealing their painful memories of Siberia or Kazakhstan (“On Trains and Tea,” “A Piece of Good Advice…” and “Kasha.”) The four pathways to California in “Five Countries in Venice” were shared by Carlos Stalgis, Roman Solecki, and Stefan Wiśniowski, the founder of Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum and the Facebook Group that brought us together.
- Another poem, “Under African Sky” emerged from the biography of painter Julian Stanczak (b. 1928) who lost the use of his right hand in a Soviet gulag, and re-invented himself as an artist in the refugee camp in Masindi, Uganda. The “tiger’s eye” I put in his hand is fictional but reflects the main idea of a re-oriented, yet immensely creative life. The Polish American Historical Association gave him theirs Creative Arts Prize in 2014 and thus I was introduced to his sublime and monumental and art.
- At the Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles I watched an astounding documentary about Polish pilots training the new Pakistani Air Force. Established in 1947 during the division of India, the Moslem Pakistan needed help in creating its military; a task assisted by about 30 Polish pilots, veterans of the Battle of Britain. Polish Eaglets Over Pakistan (Polskie orlęta na pakistańskim niebie) presented their stories and the two vivacious female pilots particularly impressed me.
- The suffering of the Polish victims of massacres by Ukrainians in the region of “Wołyń” (Volhynia, Волинь, since 1945 in Soviet Union, since 1991 in the Ukraine) only recently started to attract any attention. It was, and is, a political hot potato, just like the Armenian genocide by the Turks.
- The region of Kołyma (Колыма́) partly above the Arctic Circle includes many mines, to which the Polish Home Army soldiers were sentenced through the 1940s and 1950s for continuing to fight a guerilla war against the Soviet occupiers. Known as żołnierze wyklęci (the cursed soldiers), they were remnants of units that counted nearly 80,000 at the end of the war. The last of them, Józef Franczak, was killed in 1963.
- I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all the individuals whose stories I transformed into poems. This book is meant to honor their sacrifice and document their resilience and survival. In addition to the members of my extended family, I’m especially grateful to Stefan Wiśniowski, and Sybiracy in California Zofia Cybulska-Adamowicz, Wiesław Adamowicz, Roma King, Zofia Janczur, doktor Bożena Gryglaszewska, Elżbieta Nowicka, Andrzej Dąbrowa, and Dorota Olszewski who encouraged them to share their painful recollections.
- Sincere thanks is also due to the Finishing Line Press and its team of editors that published the original ten of these thirty poems in Slicing the Bread in 2014.
- Finally, I would not be able to finish these poems without the assistance of fellow poets and writers whose comments have been as valuable to me, as is their friendship: Elżbieta Kańska, John Guzłowski, as well as the Westside Women Writers: Millicent Borges Accardi, Lois P. Jones, Georgia Jones-Davis, Susan Rogers, Kathi Stafford, Madeleine Butcher, and Sonya Sabanac. Thank you.
≡ ABOUT THE POET ≡
Photo by Susan Rogers, 2013
MAJA TROCHIMCZYK, Ph.D., is a poet, music historian, photographer, and non-profit director, born in Poland and living in California. She published six books on music and five volumes of poems: Rose Always - A Court Love Story, Miriam’s Iris, andSlicing the Bread: Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems, plus two anthologies, Chopin with Cherries and Meditations on Divine Names that offer “rich poetic material selected and collected with great sensitivity” (Grażyna Kozaczka, Polish Review, 58/4, 2014). Hundreds of her articles and poems appeared in English, Polish, as well as in German, French, Spanish Serbian, and Chinese translations, in such journals as Angel City Review, The Loch Raven Review, Epiphany Magazine, Lily Review, Ekphrasis Journal, Quill and Parchment, Magnapoets, SGVGPQ, The Cosmopolitan Review, The Scream Online, The Original Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology, Lummox Journal, Poetry Magazine, Poezja Dzisiaj, OccuPoetry, as well as anthologies by Poets on Site, Southern California Haiku Study Group, the Altadena Library, and others.
The Sixth Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga (2010-2012) and the founder of Moonrise Press, Trochimczyk presented her work at over 70 national and international conferences in Poland, France, Germany, Hungary, U.K., Canada, and the U.S. She received fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, USC, McGill University, MPE Fraternity, the Polish American Historical Association, the City and County of Los Angeles, and Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. (www.trochimczyk.net).
The Sixth Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga (2010-2012) and the founder of Moonrise Press, Trochimczyk presented her work at over 70 national and international conferences in Poland, France, Germany, Hungary, U.K., Canada, and the U.S. She received fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, USC, McGill University, MPE Fraternity, the Polish American Historical Association, the City and County of Los Angeles, and Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. (www.trochimczyk.net).
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