TATRANEWS July Newsletter
TATRANEWS
July Newsletter
Hello Friends: First, let me express my sincere hope that you are all staying safe and well during these difficult times. We are sheltering in Vermont, which, as it turns out, to date has handled the COVID-19 pandemic better than almost any other state in the USA. Plus, we have been enjoying good weather and long walks on back roads, and are feeling healthy and fit. May it continue so! On the writing front, I have one very good piece of news to report: my fourth collection of poems, Extinction Rebellion, is being published TODAY! by Cyberwit, an international publisher of poetry from around the world. The print version is available already on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9390202329/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i11 and a Kindle version will be available very soon. We will get the volume into the hands of other sellers, too, as well as libraries. The poems in this volume largely continue the focus on the natural world, and man's impact on it. Human-caused climate change and environmental pollution are resulting in species extinction and significant episodes of drought, violent storms and wildfires. These poems, much like the ones in my previous volume, Extinction, (published by P.R.A. Publishing) are a call to action. The last section is devoted to the pandemic which, in many ways, is a connected calamity: overpopulation and our disregard for the environment has allowed the virus to spread rapidly around the world. I hope you will also look out later this year for my first collection of short stories, The Spinning Mind, (P.R.A. Publishing) and the rerelease (by Black Opal Books) of an updated edition of my first thriller, Arctic Meltdown. For fans of Hanne, the beautiful Danish geologist heroine, I am already working on an exciting sequel (working title Arctic Inferno) for release next year. As an apéritif, I will leave you with a poem from Extinction Rebellion. Where the lemons blossom … (Wo die Zitronen blühen …) Lemons still blossom, and not just in Italy— they thrive in Assam, in Burma and Persia, as well, in California and Florida. You can hear Strauss’s “Wo die Zitronen blühen” waltz today on your iPhone anywhere in the world or read the novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, his masterpiece, “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship”, you can delight in Manet’s exquisite still life, “Le Citron”, painted in eighteen hundred and eighty. But will lemons—will anything—still bloom anywhere when man-caused climate change ravages this planet? Will we be around to appreciate this fruit, so perfect: its blossom’s beauty, its taste’s tartness, and the wonder of the sublime art it inspired?
