TATRANEWS - April Newsletter

Hello Friends: April is always a busy month: it is Poetry Month, Earth Month, and often Easter, Passover and Ramadan fall into it. So Happy Holidays to everyone, read or write a poem and do something for Gaia, Mother Earth. This April is also special as I am in Kenya, visiting my son, daughter-in-law and two little granddaughters and on safari with them, my daughter and her husband and their two little boys, and my wife, Marcia. Truly a memorable experience to watch the little ones enjoy the fabulous creatures of the Masai Mara. But this Easter, I continue to be shocked by the news coming out of Ukraine: the war that started in February and has spilled over into April, by the horrors inflicted on the Ukrainian people by the criminal, Vladimir Putin and his gang. As I mentioned previously, I am reliving the nightmares of what the Soviets did to Hungary during the Revolution in 1956 which I lived through and escaped from with my parents. I wrote about this in For the Children, my first memoir, and continue to weave those events into my memoirs and thrillers in one fashion or another, and as well, to a certain extent into my short stories -- see the recently published collection, The Mind Spins. More specifically, in terms of my thrillers, the Twisted trilogy (Twisted Reasons, Twisted Traffick, and Twisted Fates) all have an evil Russian state condoning trafficking in weapons, nuclear material, women and children among other things. My family's story serves as the basis for these novels -- which now, I am happy to say, are also Audiobooks (the audio versions are available now on ACX, Audiobooks or Amazon). And my thriller, Arctic Meltdown, published last year, ominously portends both the effects of climate change and where Putin may turn his attention next. On a different note, on April 4th, I had the pleasure of doing an online poetry reading with three great poets from the Poetry Society of Vermont hosted by the Kellogg Hubbard Library in Montpelier VT. In case you missed it, you can listen to it here (I am third in from the start): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCSCYUarRXM And please watch out for my EXTRAORDINARY NEWSLETTER later this month, in which I will feature ten books by ten great authors, great summer reading in several different genres. In honour of Poetry Month and Earth Month, I would like to leave you with this poem from my third collection, Extinction: Witching Hour Is this the witching hour, the turning point, when the simmering seas boil, spill across the cauldron’s brim to flood this verdant earth: corpses of frogs and fish, seals and birds, our detritus, plastics and rotting hulls wash up with the silt to bury my feet Is this the witching hour, the turning point, when wildfires spread, raging across the land and consume forests and fields, roads and towns, killing with burning heat and acrid smoke all life they find in homes or barns or nests or frantically fleeing the fated end Is this the witching hour, the turning point: we know damn well it is, but do nothing-- we continue our hedonistic lives, complicit in destroying our one earth Happy holidays and good reading, Geza