Aug.
19
2019
I just received my copies of the We’Moon 2020 Datebook themed “Wake Up Call.” This beautiful annual publication is packed with art and writing by and for women. It includes moon phases, astrology, and every aspect of earth wisdom imaginable. This year I have 2 pieces: “St. Anne, Patron of Mothers of Daughters” and “Mokosh, Goddess of the Working Woman.” St. Anne is, of course, in Christian lore, the mother of Mary the mother of Jesus. I have long thought about Anne’s story and how difficult it is for mothers of famous daughters who follow a path that almost totally excludes them. And in that light how tough it is for all mothers to let their offspring go to follow their true path and purpose. Mokosh is my maiden name, bequeathed to me by my Czechoslovakian grandparents who immigrated here in the nineteen-teens without money, language or knowledge of their gods. I found out by accident on the internet many years ago that Mokosh is an actual slavic goddess who is being studied more actively now. The Slavs didn’t have a written language years ago and the culture was too poor to erect lavish statues. Besides Mokosh is a homely goddess of fieldwork, spinning and childbirth. Her name means water, something they had little of. She is not glamourous, with a big head and large hands. Her feast day is any Friday.
Aug.
19
2019
My poem, “Glass Midden,” one of a series I am working on about our fascinating shoreline at Cape George in Port Townsend, is up now on the Split Rock Review website. Got to www.splitrockreview.org, click on Current Issue, Read, and my poem is the second one down under Poetry. I continue to collect treasures from the past on this beach that seems to me to hold both history and heartache.
Jul.
22
2019
Two of my poems are in volume XXXV of The MacGuffin, the fascinating journal out of Schoolcraft College. This publication has been around from years and I have submitted a number of times and am so proud to finally have my work included! I have been intrigued by the focus which is on a “macguffin,” something, often simple, upon which the plot turns in a story and even in a poem. My macguffins are a comb, a symbol for a homeless child, and a pewter teapot, the only thing left behind by a thief. I wrote the second poem last year at Centrum. It is based on a true story often told to me by my grandmother, an immigrant girl who came to America in her teens.
May.
14
2019
My poem, “Glass Midden,” is set to appear in the September issue of Split Rock Review! This is a Port Townsend poem written about our fascinating glass beach where erosion has taken down and re-formed debris from over a hundred years of peninsula history. I love beach combing there and hope my poem reflects the mystery and pathos of physical history.
May.
14
2019
Again in 2020 I will have two pieces in the We’Moon Datebook! I always love being a part of the synergetic creativity of the dozens of women artists and writers who focus each year on earthly and cosmic energy. My first piece for next year is “St. Anne, Patron of Mothers of Daughters” and talks about the intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship. The other one is “Mokosh, Goddess of the Working Woman.” As many of you know, my maiden name was Mokosh and my heritage is slavic coming out of Slovakia and the Czech Republic. A few years ago, I discovered the ancient slavic goddess Mokosh, quite by chance. She isn’t a glamour girl; rather a large-handed, big-headed persona who is there for the difficult tasks. See more at www.wemoon.ws.
May.
14
2019
My poem, “Nun Gowns,” was awarded an Honorable Mention in this year’s Allen Ginsberg Poetry competition sponsored by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College! The poem will appear in the 2020 edition of the Paterson Literary Review. This is a long-standing competition and I have long admired the writing and poetry advocacy efforts of executive director Maria Mazziotti Gillan. I am so thrilled to have a poem of mine recognized here!
Dec.
18
2018
“Gutenberg’s Mirrors” and “Traffic Fiction” are both included in this wonderful journal, a publication of Spalding University. The amazing Greg Pape, former poet laureate of Montana, is poetry editor. The first poem was inspired by a fact my friend Devon Damonte told me about the famous Gutenberg not starting out to invent moveable type but rather mirrors to help pilgrims discover the power of saints’ relics. The one about traffic is a tribute to my mother, one of the kindest, most positive people who ever lived. She taught for 30+ years and saw the goodness in everyone.
Nov.
07
2018
The MacGuffin, a wonderful journal I have submitted to several times in the past with no luck, has just accepted 2 poems: The Truth of Pewter and Teeth of the Comb. I love the concept of a ‘macguffin,’ defined by the journal as: The moving force (and sometimes the solution) of a work of mystery fiction is referred to as a MacGuffin, a concept that originated in Victorian England.
Alfred Hitchcock used the term and said, “No film is complete without a MacGuffin because that’s what everybody is after.” The MacGuffin might be the papers everyone is looking for or the ring that was stolen — in short, the MacGuffin is any device or gimmick that gets a plot rolling. The MacGuffin itself has little, if any, fundamental importance, and, according to Hitchcock, is nothing in and of itself.
And so it is with my poems, I think. The Truth of Pewter is about a teapot my grandmother and her sisters brought from Sweden. It was a lucky charm for them in several ways and passed down to me has become something sort of magical as well. Teeth of the Comb is about homelessness and is told in the voice of a little girl living in a car with her mother and brother and the morning no one was there to fix her hair before school.
Thanks you to the editors of The MacGuffin! I am so excited to see my poems in print and to read the other work therein!