MARTA MITROVICH
About Marta
This picture
is probably closest to what people will recognize as Marta from the time
when she became Director of the Laguna Poets as a weekly poetry reading
series in the 1970s until she retired in 1989. She had been a stage and
motion picture actress in Hollywood, and New York. She was born in Yugoslavia,
raised there and in Chile, lived in London during World War II and the
Blitz. During the Cold War, her Laguna Poets was most likely the only
on-going poetry reading in Orange County, and she passionately and tenaciously
espoused the belief that the art of poetry could, and should, be a major
factor in bringing peace to the world. And she believed that poets, like
actors should be paid for performing their work. She also felt that aspiring
poets could benefit from contact with the work of more accomplished writers.
So she brought such major poets as W. S. Merwin, Diane Wakoski, Allen
Ginsburg, Gary Snyder, Phillip Levine, Carolyn Fourche, Galway Kinnell,
Gregory Corso, Lyn Lifshin to perform their work at what she liked to
call the Laguna Summer Poetry Festivals. One of Martha's favorite characterizations
of poetry was that it raises the expression of particular situations and
emotions to a level of universal values which can serve to bring people
together no matter what ideology they followed
A Couple
ofPoems
(first on acting, second grieving for her daughter)
On Stage (1939)
The moment
comes – so rare –
when the shaft of truth
shoots up from human depths
and touches the divine.
Transplanted is the voice and look
and stillness puts a break on time.
Caged in the prison of your vanity
your spirit had no wings
so in panic, fear, or jealousy
you whispered –
"Stop spitting in my face" –
or some other thing.
To My
Daughter Sonia (1990)
As I washed her down
this slim and lovely body
standing in the shower
with an ugly wound
where her breast should be
(was it, gouged out in a hurry
for the sake of God –
the money –)
I never could accept
that this slim and lovely body
would just disappear.
With her last tenacious will
she pushed her love of life
into husband, child and friend,
got them going – doing –
grew a new garden
built a small new home for me.
Her paintings flowered with color
better than ever before,
filled the buyers' homes
with that affirmative zest of hers.
Her mexican garden worker
who came again to help her
found her lying down
with a silence new to him.
He sat an hour beside her
as if she was his mother
then left as he had come
with never a word to anyone.
Sensing she was dying
she asked for a photo of her.
Smiling – it stands there by my window
with eyes reaching out
as sharp as any knives
to push us further on
when she is gone.
The time of mourning's over
but helpless tears still come,
there is no rest
death takes the best
too soon – too soon!
Yes, we'll push on up and on.
•Picture,
bio and poems courtesy of Pat Cohee