This issue of the Poetry Letter presents selected haiku by Deborah P Kolodji, a well-known poet and member of the CSPS who edited one issue of the California Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 4 in the Winter of 2023; she died in 2024. Recently, the California State Poetry Society received an anonymous donation in her memory, for which we are incredibly grateful. Before we arrange for other tributes to her talent and contributions to the world of poetry, we may enjoy, in this issue of the Poetry Letter, a selection of Debbie’s haiku published in different anthologies and journals, chosen by her son Sean Kolodji. I added some haiku that first appeared in the California Quarterly. With her talent, dedication, and ability to nurture others as editor and poetry event organizer, she will be greatly missed. The other “feature” of the Poetry Letter consists of poems about classical music. Two poems come from online submission by Brady Rhoades of Fullerton, California.
In Part II, we will post two book reviews by Michael Escoubas, Lin Lae Lae La: Selected Poems by Maung Sein Win (translated by Ei Ei Tin and James Green) and The Presence of One Word by Andrea Potos. The issue will be rounded up in Part II with a tribute to Anna Maria Mickiewicz, our 2023 Annual Contest Judge who celebrated 40th anniversary of her poetic debut in the fall of 2025. The illustrations are paintings by Andrzej Kołodziej, a Polish American painter and poet whose artwork graced the cover of the CQ, vol. 51, no. 4.
I wish all CSPS a creative and poetic New Year 2026!
—Maja Trochimczyk, CSPS President
To end 2025 in style and remember one of our long-time members, Deborah P Kolodji, I invited her son Sean Kolodji, to select some of her best, previously published poems for publication in this issue of the Poetry Letter. I added some of her verse that previously appeared in the California Quarterly.
An American poet, editor and poetry activist, Deborah P Kolodji (née Anderson; 1959 – 2024) was born and raised in Southern California. Already as a teen, she published poems inspired by Star Trek, later she studied mathematics (B.A. 1981, University of Southern California) and worked in in the field of information technology. She initially published poems about science fiction and fantasy, later expanding her interests to haiku. Hundreds of her haiku and other short-form poems were included in anthologies and literary journals. She edited or co-edited several anthologies of English-language haiku, including Eclipse Moon (2017, with William Scott Galasso). She co-founded and edited Amaze: The Cinquain Journal as well as annual Dwarf Stars anthologies designed to bring attention to short form speculative poetry and sci-fi-haiku. She edited an issue of Eye to the Telescope, a speculative poetry journal that she also co-founded.
Kolodji served as president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (2006- 2011); moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group; California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America; and board member of Haiku North America (2016-2024). She published: Vital Signs (Cuttlefish Books, 2024), Distance (Shabda Press, 2023, co-authored with Mariko Kitakubo), Tug of a Black Hole (Title IX Press, 2021), Highway of Sleeping Towns (Shabda Press, 2016), Red Planet Dust (2007), Symphony of the Universe (Sam's Dot Publishing, 2006), Unfinished Book (Shadows Ink Publications, 2006), Seaside Moon (Saki Press, 2004), and Eternal (2025), a posthumous book of tanka co-written with Mariko Kitakubo.
CREDITS: “morning tidepools,” Seaside Moon (2005), a Kolodji chapbook by Saki Press; “white marble,” Heron's Nest (2003); “this and that,” Modern Haiku (2017); “orionids,” Tinywords (2006); “roadside wildflowers,” Mayfly (2008); “sting ray,” Simply Haiku (2005); “pi day,” Modern Haiku (2019); “dozen red roses,” unfinished book (2006), a Kolodji chapbook; “leonid streaks,” Modern Haiku (2022); “last persimmon,” Modern Haiku (2008); “what's left of us,” Modern Haiku (2015); “lingerie
drawer,” Simply Haiku (2005); “Fermat's last theorem,” Acorn (2014); “his old toolbox,” tsuri-doro (2023); “in
spite of your silence,” Haiku Registry (2010); “overripe loquats,” Vital Signs (2024), a Kolodji
book by Cuttlefish Books; “cold summer,” The Heron's Nest (2014); “hearing loss,” Kingfisher (2023); “hospital hair,” FemKuMag (2020), & “forest stillness,” Under the Basho (2022).
HAIKU BY DEBORAH P KOLODJI
SELECTED BY SEAN KOLODJI
morning tidepools
a hermit crab tries on
the bottlecap
white marble
I am small at the feet
of Lincoln
this and that dandelion thoughts
orionids—
even the sky can’t sleep
tonight
roadside wildflowers
a cop's bright lights
in my rearview mirror
sting ray
a flutter of life
in her belly
leonid streaks across the sky promises
pi day
an irrational number
of butterflies
dozen red roses
she examines the bruise
in the mirror
last persimmon
the real estate agent
suggests a lower price
what's left of us
caves
on Mars
lingerie drawer
after the divorce
skimpier
cold summer
one suitcase circling
baggage claim
Fermat's last theorem
a jar of buttons
in a hoarder's garage
his old toolbox
no way to fix
all that's broken
in spite of your
silence the birth of stars
overripe
loquats
the
squished breasts
of a mammogram
hearing
loss
my
daughter's voice
turns
into ocean
hospital
hair
the
ghost
of who
I am
forest stillness
condors return
— Deborah P Kolodji
HAIKU BY DEBORAH P KOLODJI
IN CALIFORNIA QUARTERY 50/3 (2024)
to sunset a dream
the many colors
of ocean
lego blocks
the p and s waves
of a 7.4 earthquake
sunset pier
he reels in
a sand shark
eucalyptus boughs
the monarch city
waiting for sun
straining sunlight
through a colander
solar eclipse
KOLODJI
HAIKU IN CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY 47/2 (2021)
whoosh...
my daughter spins
her twirly skirt
summer breeze
white butterflies flutter
near the bamboo
patio chimes
such stuff as dreams
are made of
NOTE: In the last haiku from California Quarterly vol. 47, no. 2, the quotation “such stuff as dreams are made of” is from Prospero, Act IV, Scene 1 of The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
I recently wrote a study about the poetic images of Polish pianist, composer, statesman and philanthropist Ignacy Jan Paderewski in verse written between 1890 and 1940 for a book published in England. I liked these old-fashioned poems so much that I decided to publish a selection in an anthology Paderewski Essays & Poems (2025); it follows my first poetry anthology, Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse (2010). Selections from both volumes are below. But any set of poems about music surely should include the most famous of them all, Rainer Maria Rilke’s An Die Musik, defining “absolute” classical music as “audible landscapes” of feelings transformed into sound sculptures. Such as understanding of music was only possible in the context of Western concept of “the music work” fixed by its composer in notation and interpreted by performers erecting these edifices of sound to take their audiences into bliss of a spiritual journey.
— Maja Trochimczyk
An Die Musik
Musik: Atem
der Statuen. Vielleicht:
Stille der Bilder. Du Sprache wo Sprachen
enden. Du Zeit
die senkrecht steht auf der Richtung
vergehender Herzen.
Gefühle zu
wem? O du der Gefühle
Wandlung in was?— in hörbare Landschaft.
Du Fremde: Musik. Du uns entwachsener
Herzraum. Innigstes unser,
das, uns übersteigend, hinausdrängt,—
heiliger Abschied:
da uns das Innre umsteht
als geübteste Ferne, als andre
Seite der Luft:
rein,
riesig
nicht mehr bewohnbar.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
To Music
Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:
silence of paintings. You language where all language
ends. You time
standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.
Feelings for whom? O you the transformation
of feelings into what?—: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heart-space
grown out of us. The deepest space in us,
which, rising above us, forces its way out,--
holy departure:
when the innermost point in us stands
outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other
side of the air:
pure,
boundless,
no longer habitable.
To Paderewski—Sovereign—Pianist (1)
I bow to thee, incomparable Pole
Thou art a flawless glass wherein we scan
The melancholy which we call Chopin,
Beethoven passionate, tumultuous soul
They cannot die, no bells for them shall knoll.
Whoever cheats mortality, they can
Supreme themselves against the doom of man
More thro’ thy special genius, round and whole
Tonight, a million indeed eyes have seen
Thy hands, consummate past a living man’s
Subtly portray in mastery serene
Beethoven, only patient genius scans
Master, with tremulous Schubert I have been,
Mine eyes have seen thy glory and Chopin’s.
(Sonnet)
Master, thy genius hurts, ‘tis so intense
So faultless, crystal-pure, like dew that drips
On a far-mountain side from one flower’s lips
The bees have found not. Oh! the sheer suspense
Betwixt the notes. Say, Master whither, whence
This magic? Past a sirens’ luring ships
Where great Odysseus went, each bell that dips
And sways and swells to full magnificence.
Let me not call on angels for thy peer,
Cry out to some far heaven, vainly scan
The firmament to match thy clear
Soul-sounding deep-sea music; let Chopin
Be thy great harp and Israfel shall fear
Thy mastery, he, a seraph, thou a man.
The Sonnet (In Answer to a Question)
What is a sonnet?
'T is the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously;
It is a little picture—painted well.
What is a sonnet? 'Tis the tear that fell
From a great poet's hidden ecstasy;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song—ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath;
The solemn organ whereon Milton played,
And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:
A sea this is—beware who ventureth!
For like a fjord the narrow floor is laid
Deep as mid-ocean to the sheer mountain walls.
— Richard Watson Gilder
How Paderewski Plays
I.
If
words were perfume, color, wild desire;
If poet's song were fire
That burned to blood in purple-pulsing veins;
If with a bird-like trill the moments throbbed to hours;
If summer's rains
Turned drop by drop to shy, sweet, maiden flowers;
If God made flowers with light and music in them,
And saddened hearts could win them;
If loosened petals touched the ground
With a caressing sound;
If love's eyes uttered word
No listening lover e'er before had heard;
If silent thoughts spake with a bugle's voice;
If flame passed into song and cried, "Rejoice, rejoice!"
If words could picture life's hopes, heaven's eclipse
When the last kiss has fallen on dying eyes and lips;
If all of mortal woe
Struck on one heart with breathless blow by blow;
If melody were tears and tears were starry gleams
That shone in evening's amethystine dreams;
Ah, yes, if notes were stars, each star a different hue,
Trembling to earth in dew;
Or, of the boreal pulsings, rose and white,
Made majestic music in the night;
If all the orbs lost in the light of day
In the deep silent blue began their harps to play;
And when, in frightening skies the lightnings flashed
And storm-clouds crashed,
If every stroke of light and sound were excess of beauty;
If human syllables could e'er refashion
that fierce electric passion;
If ever art could image (as were the poet's duty)
The grieving, and the rapture, and the thunder
Of that keen hour of wonder, —
That light as if of heaven, that blackness as of hell, —
How Paderewski Plays, then might I dare to tell.
II.
How
the great master played! And was it he
Or some disembodied spirit which had rushed
From silence into singing; and had crushed
Into one startled hour a life's felicity,
And highest bliss of knowledge—that all life, grief, wrong,
Turn at the last to beauty and to song!
— Richard Watson Gilder
NOTE: Both poems were published in Richard Watson Gilder, A Book of Music (New York: The Century Co., 1906). The Paderewski poem was written in 1891 at the outset of Paderewski’s first American tour and used in promotional literature during his early tours by Steinway and Sons, piano makers that sponsored Paderewski’s performances in America.
Richard
Watson Gilder (1844-1909) was an American poet, writer, journalist, editor, and
publisher. He served as managing editor of Scribner’s
Monthly renamed The Century Magazine in 1881; he edited it until his
death and promoted some of the best American poets and writers. Gilder published nine volumes of his own
poetry, including The Celestial Passion (1887), In the Heights
(1905) and A Book of Music (1906).
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) was a
Polish pianist, composer, statesman and philanthropist, whose concert tours
spanned the globe, including 20 tours of America. Each tour lasted for several
months and initially consisted of about 100 concerts. Such frequency of
performing in different cities was made possible by Paderewski travelling and
living on a specially fitted railroad car, with his pianos in a second
carriage, and his cook and secretary onboard. The pianist came to know him
through the recommendation by famous Shakespearean actress Helena Modjeska
(1840-1909). He became close friends with the Gilder family during his American
concert tours. Both Modjeska and Paderewski had strong links to California:
Modjeska’s house on her ranch in Orange County is now one of two National
Historic Landmark in the county (Helena Modjeska Historic House and Gardens),
while Paso Robles, where Paderewski owned vineyards and almond orchards, hosts
an annual Paderewski Festival.
Paderewski
sent each to each upon their golden rounds,
a messenger, to hold the chords profound,
unbroken still, so David’s magic string
loosened the evil fetters of his king!
So here — from what great star, divinely crowned? —
Rapt in whose ecstasy of perfect sound
Each ivory key becomes a living thing,
Aeolian murmurs of a mystic dream,
The gathering tempest mighty thunder-roll,
A sob, a shivering sight, just breathed, and mute
Strife, triumph, rapture, peace of Heaven supreme —
All, all are his, the Master’s — twin of soul
With Israfel “whose heartstrings are a lute.”
Sonata Appassionata
(On Hearing Paderewski Play Sonata, Op. 57 by Beethoven
in Lexington, Kentucky, January 26, 1923)
For the black night and rain-beleaguered earth
With the first sweep of his magician hands
Born on the flying steed of music — far
Beyond the palisades of stars on stars,
Out where the pure notes drift
On all lakes of silence through the silvery rift.
Of ultimate echoes against heaven’s bar,
He set me on the antiphonal towers of God.
All frantic tears, all petulant demands,
On dark, discordant ways that man had trod
Into benignant harmony were brought
And time and pain were nought.
And in that majesty
Of mellow chords that uplifted me,
The miracle was wrought of three in one —
The maker of the peerless instrument,
Those golden strings and ivory keys were bent
Through subtleties of tone
Into the perfect symmetry of sound —
And the Creator of the passionate, profound
Sonata whose incomparable chords
Echo the singing hordes
Of serafim who swept this toneless night
With notes like light. —
And third, the Master, the Interpreter,
The giant soul who felt the mystic stir
Of ancient memories and the secret sweep
Of dim foreknowledge break beyond the deep
Of all the melodies that leap
From God to man across the chasm of time.
And with his touch sublime
Brought this transcendent beauty into birth—
All sorrowing, all loveliness, all mirth
Were linked in music’s thrall
With All-in-All —
NOTE: A typewritten poem by Lucia Clark Markham, of Lexington, Kentucky, dated 26 January 1923. AAN Paderewski Archive, p. 115. Reprinted from Maja Trochimczyk, ed. Paderewski Essays & Poems (2025). Lucia Clark Markham (1901-1962) was an American poet, teacher and physician, who spent most of her life in Lexington, Kentucky. She published a book of Sonnets in 1944 and Sonnets to the Beloved in 1960. Her archives are in the Special Collections of The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky.
— To Paderewski
Over a thread of undulant vibration,
Whose monotone lies cunningly concealed,
You weave, young mother fancy, an emotion,
Of tonal patterns, fairy wafts congealed.
Blithe, tender, pensive strains from early days,
A fragrance kept from carefree julish ways —
Silver-clean and gossamer-delicate,
And soft, as nest-bird’s coo to her fond mate!
But now the lullaby has sung its length,
The baby sleeps and while its eyelids close,
From ‘neath the elfin moon, in throbbing strength,
Breaks forth a deep, true mother-voice — a rose
Of harmony, whose first pathetic chord
Bleeds with child-pangs and wounds of that sharp sword,
Which pierced sad Mary’s bosom nigh the Cross.
Yet, that’s the second chord — yes, not the last!
What sense of sweetest gain from little loss!
A transformation that, by magic stealth,
Reveals the mother-heart in fullest wealth —
Listen! The agony and doubt are past —
All, all resolved — a seraph’s dream of peace —
Into ineffable trust in Love’s release!
NOTE: A handwritten poem with a location and date in bottom left corner “Philadelphia, November 11, 1907.” Archiwum Akt Nowych Paderewski Archive, p. 197. Published in Maja Trochimczyk, ed. Paderewski Essays and Poems (Moonrise Press, 2025). Poems below reprinted from William Struthers, Transcriptions from Art and Nature (London, Philadelphia, San Francisco: Drexel Biddle Publisher, 1902), pages 17 and 23.
— Inscribed to E.P. Watson
As Milton sings, young bards by haunted streams
Are charmed with magic scenes in sunset skies,
So woos the low Andante ears and eyes,
Gliding from Day to greet the Moon’s first beams,
Whereat the smiling Allegretto seems
To scintillate; like as a star might rise,
Presto! To vanish in subdued surprise
At sight of the weird shadow dance of Dreams.
But ark! What horns of some fantastic chase
Wind ‘thwart the forest, silvery, afar?
Swift footed Echoes every note retrace;
And lo! Again Terpsichore doth star
With twinkling measures all the sylvan space,
Till dawn makes heard the wheels of her bright car!
A Celestial Prelude
Quietudes of darkness, infinite blue
A thousand chastened love-fires blend in you.
Ye have, by purity of tint, expressed
The apotheosis of love’s unrest.
Silvery sweeps of brightness glorified,
Shimmering, flashing ‘midst the day’s white tide,
Through you a million expiation seek
Their triumph unto world-worn souls to speak
