The following comes from Randall Bytwerk, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College, regarding the promotion of books denying the Holocaust at the Amazon.com site:

If one goes to amazon.com and searches for books promoting Holocaust denial, most of them have 5-star reviews at th… Read full post »

Cecilia Woloch is a poet I like a lot, and it's not just because she's a Polish-American and she writes about Poland, and it's not because she's probably done as much in recent years as Janusz Zalewski to bring Polish and American poets together.



I like Cecilia Woloch because her poems touch…

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People keep asking me what's up with baby Luciana, and I keep wanting to post about her but getting bogged down in various other activities, like feeding her or trying to explain gravity to her.

When I was a child growing up in Chicago, All Souls Day wasn't a big deal. My parents would tell me stories about what it was like in Poland when they were kids. People would travel to the cemeteries where their mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, were buried…

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Yes, he does. And he does a great job at it.

Levi's -- the jeans company -- is doing a series of ads using Whitman's poems.

Here's an ad using lines from "O Pioneers":

Here's an ad using some of "America":



Slate.com has an article about this amazing development in literary history.

&nbs… Read full post »

I've been looking forward to this memoir by Rulka Langer for a very long time. It's the first publication of Aquila Polonica, a new press started by Terry Tegnazian and Stefan Mucha dedicated to publishing works about the Polish World War II experience in English. The press hopes to publish/…

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70 years ago today the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east and divided up the country with the Nazis. In some places in Poland, they light candles and put them in the windows to remember the dead and the suffering of the living during that time.

My mother was living west…

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I first met Dr. Bogusia Wojciechowska over the internet about five years ago. Someone sent me a note about her and her work, and I got in touch with her as soon as I read it.

She was working on an extensive research project to document the lives of/…

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I recently received the following information regarding the upcoming conference (Oct. 3-4) sponsored by the Andy Golebiowski and the Polish Legacy Project of Buffalo, NY:

Untold Stories Come Alive

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union/…

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I got a letter on Sept. 12, 2001, from my friend Bill Anderson who tended to take a cynical view of people and government and the human animal in general. The following was the response I wrote to him that day:

I wish I could take the long view… Read full post »

 

 

 I heard today that Stalin's bust is going up at the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va.  That's right.  Come this Veteran's Day they are putting up a memorial to this man of courage, leadership, and integrity.

I'm outraged.   This guy was a mass murderer on the s… Read full post »

When my mother was dying, I spent a lot of time in the hospice with her. She had had a stroke, and she couldn't talk or move. The doctor didn't even think she could hear me or understand what was happening to her. It was quiet and lonely… Read full post »

It All Began in Poland
World War II Commemoration

The Polish Mission of the Orchard Lake Schools
SS. Cyril & Methodius Seminary
& Michigan Polonia, LLC

3535 Indian Trail
Orchard Lake, Michigan
248-683-0412

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

6:00 PM Sunset Wypominki & Candle Service at the Grotto of Ou/…

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Hercules has appeared in TV shows, movies, Disney cartoons, comic books, and even Disco Battles, but for a long time there hasn't been an epic poem focused on this hero.

Sure there may have been such a poem in ancient times. There are rumors on the internet that Peisandros/…

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This September 1st marks the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. This invasion almost destroyed Poland. According to some historians, one out of six Poles died in the invasion and the war that followed it.



The Polish Mission of the Orchard Lakes Schools, SS. Cyril and Methodius S… Read full post »

Charles Fishman, interviewed Karen Shawn, the editor of a journal on Holocaust education, for a blog he and I edit called Writing the Holocaust.

Here's his interview:

I first became aware of Karen Shawn and PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators when I read a notice about… Read full post »

Since April, when I first came across Grzegorz Wróblewski, I've been reading and enjoying his poems and his paintings. He's a Pole, born in Gdansk and raised in Warsaw, who's been living and writing in Copenhagen since 1985. His poems have appeared in a number of terrific journals bot/…

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I first read Helen Degen Cohen's poems about her experiences and her parents' experiences during and after the Holocaust in the early 90s. At the time, I was writing about my parents and their experiences in the slave labor camps in Germany, and I found in Helen's poetry a voice… Read full post »

Poet  Sharon Mesmer, author of Annoying Diabetic Bitch, is being considered for the position of Poet Laureate of the largest borough in New York.  

Ever since Walt Whitman crawled out of the swamps of Long Island and settled in Brooklyn, the poets of Brooklyn have been guys… Read full post »

My father was probably the hardest working man I knew.

When I was a kid he would work double shifts, 16 hour days, and some years he wouldn't take vacations because the bosses at the factory where he worked would pay him double time. They would give him his/…

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My granddaughter is now three weeks old. 

Last friday when she was 17 days old, she received her first bill in the mail.  It was an insurance bill.  She owes $237 to her insurance company for in-hospital baby doctor visits.

 I don't know how she'll be able to pay off… Read full post »

My friend Rati Saxena, an Indian poet, edits a monthly online poetry journal called Kritya.  Each month she gathers together poems from around the world.  This month her focus is on Iran and Persian poetry.  

It's  poetry, she says, that "talks about pain and silence,"  … Read full post »

Let me begin this self-interview by saying that I wouldn't cross the street to interview myself.

One of my favorite writers is Isaac Bashevis Singer, a man who gave more than a million interviews.  Once, an interviewer asked him who his favorite writer was and what would he like… Read full post »

Jehanne Dubrow’s The Hardship Post (winner of the Three Candles Press 1st Book Award) is not afraid to ask hard, necessary questions about identity and memory, grief, and art as they relate to the Holocaust.

In these poems, she questions, for example, whether she have a r…

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