Yellow Tree Alone

This collection of 129 poems by Marlene Hitt (b. 1936) was written over a period of almost 40 years. The first Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, a member of Chuparosa Poets, Village Poets, and other poetry groups, Marlene Hitt practiced her writing in near isolation from the "official" poetry world, while dedicating her time to the local community, as a historian, poet, and activist. She was the first Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga, member of the Village Poets in 1999, and co-editor of our 10th anniversary anthology We Are here: Village Poets Anthology" in 2020 (with Maja Trochimczyk). This book is a fruit of her poetic insights, her gifts of keen observation, reflection, and vivid expression. In 2015, Moonrise Press published "Clocks and Water Drops," Hitt's first full-length poetry volume. The current collection reprints some of these poems, and gathers other work scattered in various publications over the years. But there are plenty of poems here that never saw the light of the day and are here to enlighten and inspire us. Poet and flautist Alice Pero (the 10th Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga) assisted Marlene in selecting poems from thousands of pages and arranging them into seven chapters with distinct moods, ending with an euphonious title poem "Yellow Tree Alone," that shines with the gold leaves of Marlene's unique talent.