The Earth Is Growing ‘ by Sándor Dudás

– poems –

Over fifty, heaven feels closer, you see poorly “the blue, yellow and the loved green” and the “the earth is growing”. The time of reckoning is near. In the flickering light of inspiration and experience, now it is red asters, cawing crows, orphaned mangers of Christmases, the snow in your heart and apple trees of love covered in snow flake blossoms that transform into poems. In this light, the landscape rises above space, and time opens up to perspective: over the creek swollen with snow the biblical Gedron Bridge spans, the forests of the native land are uprooted Edens, and at the perishing fringes of the village the hiding River Tisza haunts you like a silvery wet rope of Judas.

Poet and ‘ picture writer’ Sándor Dudás, Mayor of Bükkábrány, also remains the sensitive Antheus of his homeland, “whose heart is toasted on the sun ” instead of his barefeet are, and he still sees a girl with freckles in the bright spring sun. Boiling stone echos the heat of the sun. The book is spiced with his own artwork and has the same number of poems as his age.

Károly Cseh

The book is available in Hungarian!

Letter Soup

by Cathlyn Brook

Somewhere in Hungary, there lives a journalist, who commuting to work day by day, has explored a huge amount of experience over the years. Everything that does not fit into the framework of journalism, is published in a book under the name Cathlyn Brook.

And somewhere on the pages of the ‘ Letter Soup’ there lives another journalist, named Molly, successful in her profession , and a happy person every now and then, although both her private and professional lives are exciting even shocking.

The two worlds of these two characters are blending into one in ‘Letter Soup’. The story is based on experiences happened in the 21st century, the inner thoughts are the confessions of the writer herself, embedded into the heart of the main character.

The story spans two years in the life of Molly. The novel contrasts the small town with the big world spiced with black humour. Important and less important people, Hungarian and European locations, faithfulness and cheating are pictured in the story.

Cathlyn’s Brook ‘Letter Soup’ is a classic book, that fits into a handbag or pocket, to have it on you when taking the bus or tube to make yourself entertained.

The book is available in Hungarian!

Is this love?

by Cathlyn Brook

Relationship dilemmas and associated emotions associated are the eternal companions of our life. One never ceases to search for finding happiness, man and woman are destined to long for peace and harmony between them. This book explores the most intimate feelings with astonishing frankness and openness, speaking genuinly about love, while focusing on such issues as what one can do, what to wear, what one can give, what the right path is. This is two people’s honest confession about their feelings for each other and experiences they have shared, having been united in love, lust and a spiritual journey.

The book is available in Hungarian!

Me, Marcus by Szilvia Polgár

“I so wanted to let her know, how deeply I felt for her when she was a puppy and was weeping so desperatly I so understood her when once she wanted to maverick because I knew the feeling, but since I have been living here with her I do not want to run away to anywhere anymore. I wish I could have told her that I believed in fate driving her into my way for a reason. Although my mom thinks I am the speaking image of Ravel , I doubt this is the only reason he has chosen me. Soul-mates will find each other , since they share the hardship of their past, and I am ever so sure we are soul-mates.

Every committed dog-owner could go on and on talking about the funny or sometimes annoying habits of their charming pet. In this book life is pictured through the eyes of man’s best friend : the way the dog sees the world and himself in it, and the invisible bond that makes man and dog friends. It is a bittersweet tale for grown-ups based on the true story of a german shepherd. It is a must to read by every dog-lover. Those who are not great fan of dogs should read it, too, so they will get to love dogs. Hopefully …

The book is available in Hungarian!

About a Khazar Girl

by Garmás T.

This recent book contains the sad recollections of a Mezőkövesd woman. From the little stories we learn the life of a Khazar girl in the 1940s and 50s, the time when Ukraine incorporated into Russia. The child got frustrated both by politics and the troubled family life around her. Despite the hardship and misery of her youth, she turned into a warm-hearted and loving person.

From the stories we learn how often she had to move house and change school. This resulted in losing old friends and gaining new ones, making friends and finding new loves. Finishing the plytechnic school she immediatelly had to find a job, holding on and fighting against the agressive and ‘disgusting’ employers. To live to get disappointed in a father, friends and colleagues. The book goes on to follow her into America where she is exposed to new impressions, then to Mezőkövesd, Hungary where Tamilla, the Khazar girl finally settles down and finds her peace.

The family stories help the reader to understand the life and origin of the Khazar and Cossack people, their history, their religion and custom, their fears and everyday life. And also that the people of Ukraine, were the victims suffering in the Soviet Union, just like all the ‘liberated’ countries. The style of the book is the very proof of this, since the auther’s mother tongue is Russian.

This book is recommended to saga fans who loves stories embedded in history.

Mrs. Ilona Cservenyák

The book is available in Hungarian!

Poems

by Mrs Erzsébet Kiss Héczei – József Drabon

Intorduction

This is the joint work of Mrs Erzsébet Kiss Héczei and József Drabon. Both authors have been experiencing the good and the just for long decades during their lives sometimes battling with hardships. Their poems are fed on these memories and ideas that they have just started to compose lately. In their poetry their deep christianity is revealed, the lines are interwoven with faith and hope for mankind, spreading the words that only love makes people content.

Their late poems also reveal that they both preferred natural science to humanities. Their poetry was inspired by their sensitivity towards people and the outside world. Readers can identify with their emotions and ideas concerning work, nature, family, public life, history.

Free from all modernity or formailsm, the poems wonderfully preserve the top qualities of our fiction writing heritage. Both authors are consequently stick to the Hungarian, rhytmic, rhymed metrical style. These poems were composed not only to the white-eared readers but to everybody. Heczei’s recurring theme is motherhood, while Drabon’s is fate. “The trees are just about to lose their costume of green / The breath of wind rolls the leaves / Reaching the ground softly / The trunk is not dead, its branches reach out lively.” /’ Fall and me’ by Héczei. This strophe suggests that the writer is getting more productive by the age and that ‘old age’ itself can also be an inspiring era in a writer’s life, discovering some new imperishable symbolism.

Drabon’s poetry is dominated by wartime experiences. His poem , ‘For Whom the Bell Did Not Toll’ was inspired by a father killed in World War II. : … in the infinite space, the toll of the death bell is echoed.” The’ Trianon Calvary’ features the values of today’s man’s fate. It also emphasizes the well known fact that a poem should be charged with sparkling spirituality.

This volume of poetry is very much recommended to the dear reader with its graceful and colloquial style.

János Pap

The book is available in Hungarian!

A Groom Forever

by Kálmán Laboda

– Selected poems –

A Groom Forever- why the title?

Can one marry to a woman, money, wealth or success? Well, these things are not for me. If you managed to do so, well done you, I’d even like to be in your shoes, but only for a while, I guess. Is it possible to ‘adopt’ a smooth way of life, happiness or LIFE itself ? I think very few can manage. Can you take all women to wife? Everybody is seeking to have a little taster of Paradise on Earth.

And finally, is it possible to percieve God’ direct calling, His mercy? Very few have experienced so and I envy them, since true life and happiness are the real ‘currency’. I am a bachelor myself, a groom-to-be, a seeker forever.

Kálmán Laboda

The book is available in Hungarian!

Dreams Exiled

by László Pázmándy

– Poems –

Lyricism is undoubtedly evokes passion and raises questions in the readers and almost compels that we ourselves are classified into one of today’s boxes : disloyal friends, selfish materialism, betreyal, lack of self-restraint among the elbowers, the daily fear of trouble. All these striking phenomena of our time and our lives, too.

Reading the poems, one realizes, that we have long fogotten to reveal and expose our joy and sorrow instead of hiding them, and that we have to find our way back and start to learn to rediscover our human nature and moral values and to face with our struggles without shame but with heart. The attitude of the writer is so loveable. His poetry, that is free from all the artifical, vanity and up-to-dateness, has the craft to evoke solidarity in the reader.

The poems fall into two categories. The poem, ‘ He Came to the Field of Snow to Lose’ signals a bunch of poems which deal with the prototype that after several years of struggling in life realizes, that something very important is missing from his life and fears it is too late.
The poem, ‘ Why we took the cross ?’ signals the other cycle of poems that impresses the reader with the physical and mental struggles of a belated love. Love is a miracle that has the power to conjure a blissful and areial dreamworld into the greyness of reality.

Sadly, life is unpeaceful, and so is man’s fate. The poems reflect paradoxes, since drifting in life is followed by consequences. This is when the reader meets such phrases as screaming, fate, mercy, hell, lavishing.

The message of the author seems to be the revelation, that we are all companions in distress.

The book is available in Hungarian!

The Message of Silence

Bükkalja Anthology

They were born here in this region

Here, where the various forms of space and the gentle hills of the lowlands are embraced, the beautiful landscape of Bükkalja was begotten. All five of them are the children of this wonder-landscape, carrying loyalty and humility in their genes. Their hearts and souls of strong gravity, like the stone thrown in the air, falls back on the ground and finds rest on the Earth calmly. Together with the poet Babits, they believe, that ” Wherever your paths take you, there is a country you carry with you, a stubborn taste , a soft song.. ” Dear Reader, this is the soft song that you can hear when reading this anthology. If you are a stranger to this region, tasting these lines will teach you about Bükkalja.

This volume contains poems, short stories and artworks by Matyóföld artists Károly Cseh, Imre Hajdu, Kálmán Laboda, László Pázmándy and János Pető.

The book is available in Hungarian!

Meet me at Uncle Csáter!

by Imre Hajdu

Uncle Csáter – alias József Hegyi – was actually my great grandfather.

I inherited a wine cellar in Bogacs and my character from him. They say, those who actually knew him personally. I trust them and feel proud for it.

The first part of this book is a tribute to my great grandfather and his descendants thus to my close relatives. For me, the centre of the world is Uncle’s Csáter’s wine cellar in the village of Bogacs.

We have visitors throughout the country, from Békéscsaba to Tatabánya. Moreover, many from abroad visit our cellar. They mainly come for wine tasting, but they also enjoy my stories, stories that are true. I treasure these stories as my very own.

In part 2, I have stories about a prehistoric man in Subalyuk, the secret of the ‘beehive rocks’ , and the story why Mihály Munkácsy Géza Gárdonyi and József Eötvös liked Bükkalja. There are also more fascinating stories about why Ferenc Móra liked the Avas Hill in Miskolc, how statues by Fadrusz got to Megyaszó, or the reason why Szirmabesenyő meant the ‘Island of Happiness’ for Szinyei Merse Pál. From my stories you can also learn about the crying Madonna in Sajópálfala, the roots of Béla Bartók in Borsodszirák, the dark forests of Radvány, the ‘stone sea’ of Boldogkőújfalu, just to mention a few of them.

Dear Reader, come and join me to discover the County of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén!

The book is available in Hungarian!