MAJA HERMAN SEKULIĆ

 

MAJA HERMAN SEKULIĆ

 

The Grand Plan

 

The train moves on

from the Penn station

it takes me to Princeton

over and over again

Ivy league that is the plan

what is the plan

love, love is the plan

l knew three American Poet Laureates

personally

two of them loved me but

it is not the grand plan

I will write one day

as soon as I resolve

enigma of the ducks

swimming with new ducklings

in my fountain

every spring

every early spring

in the city

love

is the only plan

 

Bossa Nova

 

My diary ended suddenly

When, remember, the rain fell over Ipanema

And in our eyes we still held

Turquoise, tourmaline and topaz sparks

From the shiny lapidarium

And my straight hair curled up

But not from the eternal humidity

It spoke for me

It is important to stay silent about the most precious moment

We were in search of bossa nova

While in the streets police patrols were killing boys

And the enormous Christ was constantly pointing his finger

From Corcovado

the huge shadow of his broad shoulders

covering coffee plantations in the Tijuca jungles –

it was necessary to survive the eternity of the rain forest

to accept the truth of Nature

We were in search of bossa nova

While next to us longlegged mulattas where for sale

And everbody looked too joy full

Incessantly

On the verge of sickness while dancing samba

Under the elaborate masques of the sweaty carnival

And we just found out that carioca means a white man’s house

And that there are more lights from favelas than there are stars

And that we sailed north on the boat to arrive to the South

To clear bays of the dark island

Into blue veins of a giant who, they say, is awakening

But I know is still in deep sleep

And that in his dream realm

He cannot be more calm than that rain over Ipanema

While pocking dots in the beach sand

And leaving teardrops in my diary 

 

From The Lady Of Vincha*,

Cantos IV

 

First Word in the World

I gave birth to him among flowers,

But this time he didn’t survive,

The field lay bare like my heart,

He was crying for his God fighting for breath

I left my desolate liar and cut the cord

With blade as sharp as my pain, black as his eyes

And then we buried him.

 

The sun hung low, bled into clouds,

My eyes blood shot as well

I put black mask on my face

Opened my eyes again in darkness

Beyond this world

In vague memory of those wasted magic formulae

Scratched on the amphorae I forgot all about

 

Yes, I put the black mask then, the mask of death,

Erasing time, erasing memory,

Sleeping fetus like on the clay floor,

Chewing on buds

I was so empty,

Hungry.

 

I will give birth again when hawthorn trees bloom

In spring, the cruel time.

Womb is life

Womb is tomb

I am the mistress of both

Not knowing it.

 

He, my husband, lover, brother, father, friend, embraced me

No words were there for us, no words were necessary,

His stare next to the black holes of my eyes,

His wolf’s breath kissing my white face,

It was neither the sadness, nor the pain, or desperation,

It was the language of love that we did not speak yet

The rain came again that was not rain and tears that were not tears.

 

Then in the soft clay I etched the first word in the world: LOVE.

 

Word by the author:

The language of poetic myth on the territory of the Old Europe is a magic language dedicated to the Moon Goddess or the White Goddess according to Robert Graves, to the divine Muse, according to me, to the Goddess of Death, Birth and Beauty – to the physical, spiritual and intellectual triad, to “trojeručica” or Panayia Tricherousa – the divinity with three arms, omniscient, prophetic, the one that rules the mankind since the beginnings of time. This is how the inhabitants od the Old Europe saw her – the Great Goddess – as the embodiment of the whole life cycle from birth until death and rebirth, without dividing it in good and bad cycles as all later historic religions did.

          If the primary role of poetry was magic invocation of the Muse as a wish to live in harmony with nature, then she is the same today only inverted in a civilization where poetry symbols are ridiculed, Moon is reduced to mere Earth satellite, and woman to the second rate being, and where everything is for sale.

          Only the poet speaks truth. And this poet is a woman, as Goethe knew.

          And, it seems very likely that that the very first poet, proto poet and proto artist, was some Lady of Vincha (Vinča) - the first urban like settlement and the center of the great egalitarian-matristic autochthone European Vinchan proto culture and language.* 

          It was before the invasions of the patriarchal, bellicose and hierarchical Kurgans, who, according to some scientists, brought war, horses and their language and thus mixing with the old European tribes and tongues, gave birth to Indo-European langs. **

My Lady of Vincha will get a personal name of the old archaic goddess Maya, whose name I bear, because in poetry everything subjective becomes objective. This goddess was portrayed in classic Greek poetry as “forever young and beautiful” although her name comes from Maîa, mother of Hermes who guides souls to the Hades. This name is also a homonym related to μαῖα (maia), an honorific term for older women related to μήτηρ (mētēr) 'mother, from which also the Serbian name “mater”, “majka” (mother), and with long accent on “a” - grandmother, proto mother of us all, derives, and I, here, in the poem, assume all those roles.  This name is also present in Sanskrit and it is the name of Buddha’s mother. She is in fact the White Goddess, wife, sister and mother of us all that puts spells with the hawthorn branch. Hawthorn, also known as the Maytree, is known as the tree of purity and purification and that is why Romans never married in the month of May named after it.  Willow (gr. helyce, old Slavic vrba), another tree mentioned in the poem, gave name to the river Helicon where her nine orgiastic priestesses – the nine Muses –abide, willow being the sacred tree of poetry.

* The Vinča culture, also known as Turdaș culture or Turdaș-Vinča culture, is a Neolithic archaeological culture in Central Europe and Southeastern Europe, dated to the period 5700–4500 BC.[1][2] Named for its type site, Vinča-Belo Brdo, near Belgrade, Serbia, a large settlement discovered by Serbian archaeologist Miloje Vasić in 1908, it represents the material remains of a prehistoric society mainly distinguished by its settlement pattern and ritual behaviour. Farming technology first introduced to the region during the First Temperate Neolithic was developed further by the Vinča culture, fuelling a population boom and producing some of the largest settlements in prehistoric Europe. These settlements maintained a high degree of cultural uniformity through the long-distance exchange of ritual items, but were probably not politically unified. Various styles of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figurines are hallmarks of the culture, as are the Vinča symbols, which some conjecture to be the earliest form of proto-writing.

 

MAJA HERMAN SEKULIĆ

 

MAJA HERMAN SEKULIĆ (aka Maya Herman) is an internationally published Serbian-American author of 22 books. She is a multi awarded Poet, popular Novelist, distinguished Essayist, bilingual Scholar, major Translator, acclaimed Icon of Poetry, World literature, and Style; she has multiple times been anointed as an Ambassador of peace, good will and contributions to the world literature. Maja Herman is also a Princeton Ph.D. in Comparative Literature who taught at the most prestigious universities such s Princeton, Rutgers, and was a guest lecturer at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Iowa universities and a recipient of two Fulbright scholar awards, American University Women and Princeton University fellowships. In 2019-20 Maja Herman Sekulić received 11 prestigious international awards by World Congress of Poets, Munir Mezyed Foundation, Turkish Writers Association, including the one given to the foreign poet in the Roman senate for a foreign poet, and the recipient of the first Serbian Oscar for popularity . She was also appointed the Global Poetry Icon and the US Chair of the Global Literary Society by its president dr Bhagirath Choudary, as well as the Ambassador of Good Will by the president of the World Literature Conference dr Jernail Anand and awarded by the Galaxy Jury the title of Golbal Icon of World Peace and Humanity. She is also a recipient of the very prestigious Simo Matavulj award, named after the first President of the Writers Association of Serbia. She was most recently awarded the “Light of Galata” in hnnor of her contribution to poetry and better understanding between culutures from Turkey,  and an Interviw with her alng with 3 poems  just came out in a leading international poetry magazine, The Poet, published in England. Her poetry colllection, The Grand Plan, was published in 2019 in English  in German and in 2020 in Italian translation by Claudia Piccino with and introduction by Dante Maffia. Her poems appeared also in 2019-20 in various prestigious Brtitish/American and international anthologies such as  21 c. Literary Criticism, Literature Today Volume 9 and !10, Poetic Bond IX and X, the Galaxy Atunis Poetry Anthology The Winter is Coming international poetry, Poets and Poetry, Brave World Magazine, and Serbian national tv chanels and dailies such as Politika and Blic.  Her poem Love in the Corona Time was translated in 25 languages and published in a special digital edition by Alia Mundi as the “poem that united the world” as its editor dr Ana Stjelja called it. In 2020, the distinguished Ars magazine published a fruit of 2 year labor of distinguisdhed academicians – a double issue dedicated entirely to her Literary world – Maja Herman Sekulic READER - on 339 pp with 464 units of Bibiliography, spomsored by the Ministry of Culture and University of Monte Negro. In 2019-20  she also published her novel in English Looking for Lolita, and volume 4 and 5 of her Selected works were published in Serbian by 2 major national publishers, as well as the new edition of her poems You who are me soon to be adapted fot the National Theater in Belgrade. Her novel Ma Belle, in English translation, was nominated for the 2018 international Dublin literary award. It was also nominated in 2016 for NIN, the most prestigious Serbian literary award, as were her 2 previous novels. Her Tesla biography in English Who was Nikola Tesla? The Genius who gave us Light, and her selected poems in a bilingual English-French e-edition, De La Terre de Desolation/Out of the Waste Land came out in 2016, and along with the long poem Lady of Vincha published in 2017 mark a major return to her origins in poetry. First 3 books of her Selected Works were published by 2 major Serbian publishers in October 2017 as the publishing event of the year. First in the series is Sketches for Portraits, a unique book of essays and conversations with major world poets such as Nobel Prize Winners Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott or Bob Dylan she befriended, or critics such as Nrthrop Frye who included their correspondence in the 10th volume of his Collected works, Susan Sontag or Harold Bloom, who at one point declared her to be his “spiritual daughter”. Second in the edition of her Selected works is Digital Galaxy, a multi genre book about the transition from Guttenberg to Digital Galaxy. Finally, there is her Poetry, a major collection of new and selected poems. Her new long poem, The Mighty Irina was published in October 2018 in both Serbian and English and had its premiere at the “Smederevo poets’ autumn” along with a selection of her poems in German  in the prestigious edition “Meridians”.  In 2018 she was honored as one of the Style Icons of Serbia in 20th and 21st century among 42 most important women in 2 centuries and in 1990s she was included by the Vogue photographer Marco Glaviano among the most beautiful women of the world. Maja Herman Sekulić is also a contributing editor for major magazines and a world traveler. Born in Belgrade, where she studied World literature, she spent last decade of the last century in the Far East and now shares her time between New York and Belgrade. She is awardee of the Serbian Association of Writers, cofounder of the Serbian Writers’ Society, member of the American and Serbian PEN and the Academy of American Poets. For more info look at