Acrylic on Canvas. Stanczak Foundation, Cleveland.
The end of one year, the beginning of another. Calendar pages measure our days and months, spiraling through the years… This issue of the California Quarterly measures the passage of time with tetragrams by Richard Kostelanetz, a two-line poem by Elsa Samkow-Frausto, three sedoka by Margaret Saine, and a variety of longer verse, marking time with the spacing of their layouts.
I like starting to edit a new issue of the CQ with a set of themes. In this case it was the sun, solstice, and myths or folk-tales. Yes, we received a lot of “sunny” poems, for instance, from Saine (“the sun paints /a turquoise ball / behind my eyelids”) or James Tweedie (“The Silence of Sunrise”). Yet, there were far more poems that celebrate oceans, lakes, hues of water, trees, motion, transience, and the perennial themes of love and gratitude. Poets are grounded in the soil of their gardens, calmed by birdsong (Elina Petrova), or by watching ocean waves. “What do you learn when you face only blue?” asks Hedy Habra. On the quest to unravel secrets (Glory Cumbow, Sonya Sabanac), poets are taken “to that edge where / everything disappears” (Pamela Singer), an experience that “still makes you soft with longing” (David Rosenheim). How real was it in the first place?–asks Jane Stuart. “We are the human starfish,” concludes John Grey, blessing alternate universes of reincarnation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
California Quarterly, Volume 46, Number 4
Perhaps the Sun - Margaret Saine 7
A Dream: Somewhere in Kansas - Gary Metheny 8
Secrets - Glory Cumbow 9
Inside a Book of Stories - Marilyn Robertson 10
Bookshelves - Sarah Baker 10
In Light, Hope - Barbara Swift Brauer 11
Did I overhear Gen say - Elsa Samkow-Frausto 11
A Map of What Already Is - Charlene Langfur 12
Richness - Caleb Coy 13
The Wonder - Sonya Sabanac 14
Childhood Memory - Louise Moises 15
Dandelions - Craig Cotter 16
Unfettered - Timothy Paul Evans 17
Praising the Untranslatable - Karen McPherson 18
Promessas de Cera - Daniel Dias Callahan 19
Still Life - Beatrice Fazio 20
Initial Tack - Keith Van Vliet 21
Riding the Wind - Cindy Rinne 22
Daybreak, Swimming Walden - Barbara Swift Brauer 23
Corral - Meagan Arthur 24
How Things Are - Mary Crow 25
Or What Do You Learn When… - Hedy Habra 26
Aquamarine - Maja Trochimczyk 27
Ocean - Casey Cantrell 28
Almost Square - Mary Crow 29
Emily’s Ocean - David Sapp 30
Watershed of Souls - Lonna Blodgett 31
Reflections on Gillies Lake - Ahmad Aamir Malik 32
My poems aren’t long - Elsa Samkow-Frausto 32
Vernazza - David Rosenheim 33
Things of the Sky - Elina Petrova 34
It’s True! - Gregory Cecil 35
The Mighty - Stefano Bortolussi 36
After the Rain - Thomas Mitchell 37
The Vineyard - Ivan Amaya-Hobson 38
Once my father was young - Elsa Samkow-Frausto 38
Reading a Limbed Monterey Pine - John Schneider 39
Recipe for a Goodbye - Jackie Chou 40
Disappearance - Pamela Singer 41
Pale Horse, No Rider - Jerry Sexton 42
As If - Craig Harris 42
Or Did You Think Crushed Hopes… Hedy Habra 43
Love’s Jewelry - Patricia Corbus 44
Sunlight Smiling - Margaret Saine 45
Who’s To Say Eden - Barbara Swift Brauer 46
Between the bridge... - Elsa Samkow-Frausto 46
Fortieth Birthday - Joanne Holdridge 47
Movement in Three Parts - Mike Dillon 47
Alameda, CA - Ivan Amaya-Hobson 48
Desert Snow - Bryan Kirk 49
Distance - Michael Waterson 50
Moving in Limbo - Jane Stuart 51
Reincarnation Nation - John Grey 52
We Are All Sunrises - Manoylov 53
The Silence of Sunrise - James A. Tweedie 54
I look up at the sun - Margaret Saine 54
Two Tetragrams - Richard Kostelanetz 55
CSPS 34th Annual Poetry Contest - List of Winners 56
The Judge’s Comments - McCormick 56
1st Prize - Respite - Anara Guard 58
2nd Prize - Low Sun Angle - Susan E. Gunter 59
3rd Prize - Boundaries Barbara Allen 60
Contributors in Alphabetical Order 61
CSPS Contest Opportunities 62
CSPS Newsbriefs 2020, No. 4 63
Publishing Opportunities with CSPS 65
2020 CSPS Donors and Patrons 66
CSPS Membership and Patron Information 67
CSPS Membership Form 68
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Maja Trochimczyk is a Californian poet, scholar, translator, photographer, and non-profit director from Poland. She studied musicology at the University of Warsaw, Poland (M.A. 1986) and sound engineering at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw (M.A. 1987). In 1988 she emigrated to Canada and in 1994 she earned her Ph.D. in musicology from McGill University in Montreal. She held Postdoctoral Fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (1994-1996),and the American Council of Learned Societies (2001-2002).
Dr. Trochimczyk has been giving public readings and publishing her poetry since 2007. She published five books of poetry: Rose Always - A Love Story, 2008, rev. 2020; Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden, 2008, both from Moonrise Press; Slicing the Bread (Finishing Line Press, 2014), Into Light, and The Rainy Bread (Moonrise Press, 2016). She also edited four poetry anthologies: Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse (2010); Meditations on Divine Names (2012), Grateful Conversations (2018, co-edited with Kathi Stafford), and We Are Here: Village Poets Anthology (2020, co-edited with Marlene Hitt). Her poetry and photographs appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, among others: Clockwise Cat, California Quarterly, Cosmopolitan Review, Magnapoets, Quill and Parchment, Ekphrasis Journal, Edgar Allan Poet Journal, Epiphany Magazine, Lily Literary Review, Loch Raven Review, Lummox Journal, OccuPoetry, Quill and Parchment, Phantom Seed, Pirene's Fountain, poeticdiversity, Poezja Dzisiaj, The Sage Trail, The Scream Online, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Spectrum and anthologies by Poets on Site, Southern California Haiku Study Group, and other collections. She previously edited CQ 44:4 and 45:3.
She published seven books of music studies, including: Gorecki in Context: Essays on Music (2017), Frederic Chopin: A Reserch and Information Guide (Routledge, 2015, co-edited with William Smialek), Lutoslawski: Music and Legacy (Polish Institute of Art and Sciences in Canada, 2014, co-edited with Stanislaw Latek), and Polish Dance in Southern California (East European Monographs, Columbia University Press, 2008). Her articles appeared in American Music, Contemporary Music Review, Musical Quarterly, Computer Music Journal, Muzyka, Studia Musicologica, Leonardo, Polish American Studies, Polin, Polish Review, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians II (Macmillan), Women Composers: Music Through the Ages (G.K. Hall), Lutoslawski Studies (Oxford University Press), The Age of Chopin (Indiana University Press), 100 Lat Muzycznej Emigracji (MEA Kultura 2018), and Homage to Tansman (Wroclaw, 2019). Her musicology work was translated into Polish, German, French, Swedish, Chinese and Japanese.
Dr. Trochimczyk is a recipient of PAHA's Creative Arts Prize (2016) for her two poetry books about WWII experience of Polish civilians, including her family under German and Soviet occupation (Slicing the Bread, 2014 and The Rainy Bread: Poems from Exile, 2016). She was also honored with PAHA's Distinguished Service Award (2014), and the 2007 Swastek Prize for her article about Polish folk dance groups in Southern California published in the Polish American Studies. In 2012 she was presented with a medal for the promotion of Polish culture "Zasluzony dla Kultury Polskiej" from the Minister of Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Poland. She also received numerous city and county honors celebrating her years of volunteering for the Polish-American community.
She was nominated Acting President of the CSPS in February 2019 and elected President in October 2019. She currently also serves as the President of Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club in Los Angeles. In 2009-2020, she served as the Board Secretary and Communications Director of the Polish American Historical Association. She was a member of the Editorial Board of the Ecomusicology Review and manages blogs for the CSPS, Moonrise Press, Village Poets, and the Helena Modjeska Club, as well as her personal poetry and music blogs: PoetryLaurels.blogspot.com and ChopinwithCherries.blogspot.com.
Julian Stanczak, "Dual Glare" 1970, Akron Art Museum.
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