The activity at the Polish American Writers & Editors Facebook page has been wonderful. There are links to book and poetry reviews and blogs, opportunities for writers, excellent analysis and recommendations. I highly recommend that anyone who writes or loves to read, or who has an interest in writing become a member of this group.

Some recent/not-so-recent material:

Andy Golebiowski notes Rita Cosby’s book about her father’s participation in the Polish Underground during WWII is now in paperback and close to becoming a bestseller.

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Linda Ciulik Wisniewski recommends Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace With Scoliosis, Her Mother, and Her Polish Heritage by Linda C. Wisniewski.

Even before she was diagnosed with scoliosis at thirteen, Linda C. Wisniewski felt off kilter. Born to an emotionally abusive father and long-suffering mother in the Polish Catholic community of upstate New York, Linda twisted herself into someone always trying to please. Balance would elude her until she learned to stretch her Self as well as her spine. Only by accepting her physical deformity, her emotionally unavailable mother, and her heritage would she finally find a life that fit.

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Krysia Styrna points to Polish Writing which features Polish literature in translation. Recently linked translations include Kordian by Juliusz Słowacki as translated by Gerard T. Kapolka and available on-line through Scribd, and Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk as translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

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Dr. John Guzlowski discusses the New England Review’s article by Ellen Hinsey on the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and others last year in the Katyn Forest. The article talks extensively and sympathetically about the effect of the crash on Poland. See Hinsey – Death in the Forest.

He notes Polish American writer Danusha Goska is travelling in Poland and posting Facebook and blog updates about her travels at Bieganski the Blog.

Also noted, Daiva Markelis powerful book White Field, Black Sheep: A Lithuanian-American Life published by the Univ of Chicago Press about growing up Lithuanian-American. Her experiences in many ways parallel those of people who grew up Polish-American and the children of DPs. Read her recent interview at The Smoking Poet, Talking to Daiva Markelis

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Danuta Hinc provides a preview of her newest work, a short story entitled In the Forest of Angels. The story is inspired by real events and all the characters in the story are based on real people — her grandparents, mother, and herself.

Pol-Am writer Oriana Ivy continues her writing (absolutely fantastic and a regular read — an inspired and inquisitive poet) with Persephone and Aphrodite. There are many levels, but in short, the process of leaving Poland and coming to America, trauma, finding, and rebirth. She begins with her poem Eurydice In Milwaukee and concludes with Persephone’s Kitchen.

This poem is not about my loss of Warsaw so much as about my loss of America. I mean the idealized, imaginary America in my mind after I arrived in real America. I was seventeen. That combination – loss of both Poland and America – was to be the first in the series of my “Persephone experiences.” (Eurydice can be seen as a version of Persephone.)

In my early teens, in Warsaw, I fell in love with Greek mythology. I thought it was possible to choose your own special goddess. A fierce young intellectual, I longed for Athena at my side – Athena the super-intelligent, with her brilliant strategies and unfailing guidance and protection of heroes. Now and then I also longed for Aphrodite to lend me her charms and help me in matters of love, but with the understanding that this was a secondary goddess. As my personal goddess, I chose Athena.

Soon enough I learned that you do not choose your god or goddess. Life (or call it fate, or circumstances), in combination with your deep self, chooses for you. Past the age of seventeen and a half, the only goddess I identified with was Persephone…

There is tons more of course… all carrying you into a world of writing set apart, yet reflecting who we are in all its rootedness, shadows, and splendor.