"Atlanta Review: Poland Spring/Summer 2023"

There is never a bad time to read good to great literature, and I often read literature much older than this poetry journal from 2023. Every year, the "Atlanta Review" publishes two issues. One of those issues will have about half of the writing from a selected foreign country. In this volume, the "Spring/Summer 2023" volume, the selected country was Poland. I am somewhat fascinated by Poland for a variety of reasons. I know oone or two Polish immigrants in the US. I have also read and written a small amount about the Polish Resistance during World War II. Poland suffered greatly during the war and resisted nobly throughout the war. This volume of the "Atlanta Review" is well worth reading whether or not you have an extensive interest in Poland or not. Of the 128 pages in the book, a little more than half are dedicated to the work of a large group of Polish poets, both historical and current. While I was not greatly impressed by a few of the poems, much of the writing is well above average. The book also has brief biographies of all the poets in the book, and those of the Polish poets are well worth reading to maximize the readers understanding of these people and their work. There are roughly 20 Polish poets who have work in the book. A few have only one poem while several of these writers have multiple poems in the book. Read them all when you locate a copy of the book. They are well worth the time to read them. All have been translated into English. Maria Konopnicka and Boleslaw Lesmian are two of the more notable historical Polish poets whose work appears here. The book is well worth investing the time and effort to locate a copy, and since it is only three years old, it won't require much of a search of used book websites to locate a used copy. Or, if you are not the type of reader who still prefers to hold a paper book in your hand, you can download the entire volume at this link on the journal's website. Enjoy!

Reflections On Reading "Accordion Crimes" by E. Annie Proulx

E. Annie Proulx, or Annie Proulx as she is sometimes known, is one of America's best known and most successful authors.  She is the author of the short story on which the movie "Broke Back Mountain" was based and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for her novel "The Shipping News" in 1994.  This is actually the third of her works which I have read and yet I have not yet written about any of them on this blog which is an unjustifiable error.  At times, she is a wonderful writer and her prose can flow smoothly, interestingly, and in a manner which consistently draws the reader deeper into her works.  But, in my opinion, at times her work falls measurably short of her best.  I like this book as much or better than either of her others which I have read.  But I have to admit that I enjoyed the earlier reads enough to go back for another dip in this one. Perhaps part of that higher level of pleasure on my part comes from the fact that, as a child in grade school in Knott County Kentucky, I was exposed on a monthly basis to live gospel accordion music from Alma Heibert, of the two "Bible Women" who were allowed to visit each small, rural grade school in the county on a monthly basis as a part of their missionary work with Camp Nathaniel in the county.  As always when I mention my experience with these two women and that fact that missionaries were allowed to visit public schools in the county, I am morally and ethically bound to state that the fact that they were allowed to do so in public schools was a clear cut violation of the Separation of Church and State and never should have been allowed to happen. But, yes, I do have fond memories of having known those women and of accordion music.  

The main character in this novel is not a person but an accordion, hand made by a native of an Italian native who emigrated to the United State with the instrument he had made and eventually sold it.  The human characters come and go in the novel as the accordion passes from hand to hand, being used by members of different ethnicities to play the particular music of each culture as the instrument passes along its life.  The accordion is variously owned and played by Mexican Americans, African Americans, Polish Americans, Irish Americans, and other members of other cultures. Along the way during the story, Proulx weaves in a great deal of historical and musical information about accordions, their instrumental relatives, and many of the cultures which are historically connected to accordion music.  along the way, the instrument is loved, played, admired, and sometimes abandoned much as a human character might have been.  It is an interesting and unique method of constructing a novel and, I believe, is some of Proulx's best work.  In my opinion, the language and written structure of the novel is more skillful than that in either "The Shipping News" or "That Old Ace In The Hole" both of which I have also read and will, perhaps, also write about on this blog.  The accordion becomes a living, breathing character in the book.  It is more than just a musical instrument.  It is a delivery vehicle which deposits musical and cultural history at the reader's doorstep. It becomes the glue which brings all the other characters, cultures, and histories together.  And those histories are both documentations of cultures and of people, families, and individual and shared lives.  It is a book well worth reading, especially if the reader is not familiar with the work of Proulx it is a fine place to begin a relationship with the author and her work. 

Watching The Documentary "Big Sonia" July 5, 2019

A couple of nights ago, on July 5, 2019, my wife and I watched the award winning documentary "Big Sonia" on the Scientology Network.  Lately, we have watched a few documentaries on this network which still leaves me somewhat apprehensive as it should since I firmly believe that the so-called "religion" is  nothing more or less than one of the most dangerous cults in the world.  For that reason, I have not included a link to their website in this blog post.  Enough said about that topic.  The documentary was released in 2016 and I had never known about it until now.  It is a documentary about Sonia Warshawski who was 91 at the time the movie was made.  She is a Jewish Polish born survivor of the Holocaust and was imprisoned by the Germans when she was in her early teen years.  Nearly her entire family were victims of the Holocaust and she had to watch her father and brother removed by the SS never to be seen again.  She watched her mother marched into the gas chamber but somehow managed to survive until liberation by the Allies.  She met and married her husband in the death camps and they came to America where they ran a tailor shop until his death.  

Sonia continued to operate the shop in a dying mall until she finally received an eviction notice as the owners prepared to sell the severely deteriorated property.  But, simultaneously, she was speaking in any forum available to her, about her experiences in the Holocaust including prisons and schools.  Sonia Warshawski is presumably still alive at this writing and is a tiny force of nature in her 90's at a time when most of her age peers are long dead.  Her story should be required viewing for every student in school in America, in every prison and jail, and in every church of the more mainstream denominations. I have not seen a more inspiring, and on some key levels, terrifying documentary in many years.  

At this time in America, we have seen racism, hate speech, hate crimes, and all other forms of Right Wing Radical acts expanding and sweeping across the country just as any other virulent disease would. Those acts have included murder as seen in Charlottesville, Virginia; beatings, harassment, and arson all across the country.  And as this has been happening, the nameless TRAITOR who currently illegally occupies the White House based on his TREASON with Russia has not attempted to say or do anything stop it because of his own clearly delineated acts of hatred, racism, ignorance, and up to the caging of babies.  America and American Democracy are in greater danger than they have been in more than 60 years and we need a thousand people like Sonia Warshawski speaking out against hatred, calling the perpetrators to task for their crimes, and serving as examples for the entire human race.  As a nation, we simply cannot afford to allow these crimes to persist!  We cannot allow their perpetrators to go unpunished!  We cannot stand by and watch our country turned into a Third World bastion of all these destructive, racist, misogynistic, debilitating, and corrosive values.  Watch this documentary the first chance you get!  Tell every friend you have to watch!  Practice the values which Sonia Warshawski expresses in the movie and tell the entire world that Sonia Warshawski is an American Heroine. 

"A Nation Defiant Polish Resistance To The German Occupation Of Poland" by Richard S. Fuegner--Book Review

Fuegner, Richard S.: A Nation Defiant Polish Resistance To The German Occupation Of Poland (Edina, MN, Beaver's Pond Press, 2014)

Ever since November 8, 2016, I have been steadily reading every piece of literature I can find in all formats (books, pamphlets, electronic media) which I am led to believe can be useful in the American Resistance against the illegitimate administration which is in control of the White House.  I found Richard S. Fuegner's book in a general Internet search, ordered it, and read it quickly between reading the works of George Orwell and other writers on the subjects of totalitarian, dystopian, and repressive governments and methods to resist such governments.  It is my considered professional opinion based on my education, training, and experience that the United States is being turned into a highly repressive regime in compliance with TRAITOR Donald Trump's perverted world view.  No nation in Europe did a better job than Poland of resisting Adolph Hitler and the Russians during World War II.  We have a great deal to learn from the actions of the Polish people during World War II.  Richard S. Fuegner is an expert on the subjects of both Polish and general European Resistance during that war.  He has published several books about World War II Resistance.  

"A Nation Defiant..." is an extremely well researched, well documented, and well written work.  Mr. Fuegner has studied this general topic for many years and his massive research effort shows all through the book.  The book does an excellent job of documenting the Nazi and Russian invasions of the country, the wide ranging acts of repression and savagery which the Polish people suffered, and their determined and tireless resistance to those invasions.  The country was jointly and simultaneously occupied by both Russia and Germany and the two armies consensually divided the country choosing to seize those areas nearest their own borders.  They took every action possible to repress, oppress, and abuse the citizens of Poland.  Murder, infanticide, torture, and imprisonment with little or no cause was common by both occupiers with Germany sometimes taking slightly more violent actions against citizens.  But the Polish people, right down to relatively young children, fought valiantly and ceaselessly to impede German and Russian operations all across Poland.  This book does an excellent job of telling the story of the Polish Resistance all the way from the initial Nazi invasion to the Warsaw Uprising and eventual liberation.  It tell the story of how both Russia and the United States betrayed the Polish people by not assisting them adequately or expeditiously during the Warsaw Uprising.  The Poles were led to believe they would be assisted with supply drops, an advancement of the Russian front, and bombing raids by both countries.  These actions were not carried out at all or only in a limited way because both Russia and the United States were more concerned with their own tactical and territorial goals and thousands of brave Polish fighters were murdered by the Germans during the sixty-six days of the Warsaw Uprising.  It is a powerful story and an even more important warning sign for any country such as the United States today which is under an ever increasing attempt to create a totalitarian state by the TRAITOR Donald Trump who, interestingly enough, appears to be colluding with Russian in his efforts.  When mass roundups and deportations of relatively innocuous, harmless, and productive people are being staged daily, when multiple journalist in multiple incidents are being arrested for doing their job and covering public discontent, when threats are being made daily against the peace and dignity of the country by illegitimate occupiers of the Whiter House, it is the most important mission in the country to educate yourself and as many others as possible about all and any means by which American citizens can protect American Democracy and this book will help you to do that. 

My one criticism of the book is that is was published by a small vanity press in Minnesota, Beaver's Pond Press, and the editing was not up to par.  The book is a slick presentation with a nice cover, good printing, and acceptable illustrations which are numerous.  But it is also loaded with many typographical errors, missing words, and other linguistic mistakes which a good editor would have corrected.  The author, Richard S. Fuegner, is now 81 years old and the book was published three years ago in 2014, when he was 79.  It is possible that at his advanced age Mr. Fuegner chose to use a vanity press rather than risk becoming disabled or dying before a traditional, major publisher could be found to publish the book.  If so, that is a shame.  Mr. Fuegner had a previous record of multiple published books and this book deserved a better publisher.   But don't let the errors stop you from reading the book.  It really is a masterful piece of research, organization, documentation, and writing.  It is well worth the time and the money necessary to order and read it.  It will teach you a great deal about what happened in Poland and what could happen in the next four years in America.