Kepler's Local Author Series 

Patricia J. Machmiller 

Tuesday, September 20, 7:00 p.m.

Autumn Loneliness: The Letters of Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi, July-December, 1967    

Autumn Loneliness is a compilation of 300 letters translated from the Japanese, letters written by a married couple, deeply in love and separated by a crisis in their life in 1967. These two people were destined to become the founders of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society in San Jose, but at this time of their life, as Kiyoko says at the close of one of her letters that she finds poetry to be far, far from her reality.

Kevin Starr, Historian and professor from USC, writes: “Honest, compelling, courageous, and loving—these letters, by turns lyrical hnd realistic, document married life with a delicacy of feeling characteristic of the Japanese way of life. Autumn Loneliness reads like an epistolary novel, a fusion of life and art, telling a story of separation and longing within the context of two cultures, Japan and the United States, enriching each.”
 

Patricia Machmiller writes haiku as well as western lyrics and poetic criticism. She has written a book of haiku, Blush of Winter Moon (Jacaranda Press, 2001).  She has had poems published in Northwest Review, the Santa Clara Review, VOLT Caesura, and Denver Quarterly. She won a second place award in the Montalvo poetry contest for her poems “Boundaries” and “Whale Watch.” Machmiller is also a painter and print-maker. She has a BS degree in mathematics and chemistry from San Jose State and an MS in Systems Management from USC.

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