TATRANEWS - November Newsletter
Dear Friends:
I have not burdened you with Newsletters since July, partly because much of my summer was filled with lots of visitors, followed by six weeks of travel in Europe that took us to six countries.In late August, I did manage to have a wonderful poetry reading in the pavilion at Silver Lake Park very close to our home in Barnard, sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council. Besides poetry from my five published volumes, I also read The Purple School Bus, the first story in my short story collection, The Mind Spins, that is also the beginning of my new murder mystery novel (see below).And in late October, I had the pleasure of presenting and reading at the wonderful Charles Danforth Library in Barnard VT from the two books that constitute my "ARCTIC" series, Arctic Meltdown and Arctic Inferno, the latter published during the month of August. There is great interest in these thrillers, since they focus on the melting polar ice cap and the ensuing potential for military conflict in the Arctic, both very timely and relevant topics.
The murder mystery, The Purple School Bus Murders, is currently with publishers and I am hoping to hear back within weeks on the timing for its publication. In the meantime, I have put together a collection of my poems, both previously published and new, that focus on other animal species and how we are encroaching on them (if not driving them to extinction) with our lifestyle. This little volume, my "Beastie" Poems, will be published shortly by Cyberwit, the Indian poetry publisher that brought out my fourth collection, Extinction Rebellion. I hope you will be on the look out for this book -- it could make a lovely present for the upcoming holidays!And, as we approach the holidays -- American Thanksgiving, Hannukah and Christmas -- I will leave you with this poem (that borders on being timely) from this upcoming volume:
A rafter of wild turkeys …
A rafter of wild turkeys frolics in the field:s
ome toms and hens, young jakes and jennies,
a few poults,the birds strut and prance,
then go pecking and poking,
they halt for a moment at the side of the road
and in a burst, vault out onto the macadam,
high-tailing it across the dangerous divide—
relief! they have made it, even the smallest chick—
bravo, say I, rooting for the rafter to live:
but … in my gut, I, the glutton, think to myself:
would that meaty hen not have made a tasty meal?
Happy holidays and good reading,
Geza
