The second edition of Catalina Eddy by Lorine Parks is available now!

Lorine Parks’ Catalina Eddy is one of the most surprising and hilarious poetic romps I have ever read. Weather is “the Family business” of these meteorological guys and dolls, molls and mobsters, of whom Eddy is only one of a charming and somewhat disreputable array of noirish figures…
Yet the elegant—if at times bittersweet—music of these poems and their shifting emotional “eddies” remind us that there is as often as not a dark and somber (not silver) lining to these particular clouds.”
— David St. John

“I spend every day of my life trying to think of new, poetic ways to describe our oddly routine Southern California weather patterns. Try as I do…I can’t get close to Lorine’s beautiful work! A lovely treat for those of us that ponder the daily ebb and flow of the marine layer!”
—Fritz Coleman, KNBC L.A. Weathercaster

Publisher’s note

The first edition of Catalina Eddy was published in 2012 by Conflux Press. We would like to thank Jim Natal for his cooperation in bringing this second edition to life.

We are deeply saddened that Lorine Parks passed away unexpectedly after finalizing minor changes to the manuscript. Lorine’s family welcomed this posthumous edition as a tribute to her life and her art.

As with so many talented writers, Lorine was always looking to improve her work. The changes she did make for this edition are relatively minor—a few words, a sentence, a slight rearrangement of the order.

The essence of the poems and the story—a family of “noirish” figures inspired by California weather—remains the same, and will live on

About the Author

Lorine Parks
( 1931 – 2024 )

Lorine was a transplanted east coast girl, originally from Pittsburg, who wore many hats in life: mother, writer, athlete, businesswoman, world traveler, community volunteer. But poetry was her lifelong passion. She attended Wellesley College, then studied under Daniel Hoffman at Columbia University while writing her Master’s thesis. Later she worked with Richard Garcia.

Marriage took Lorine and her young family to Michigan and Nevada, and finally southern California. She  put down deep roots in her new community of Downey: opening a travel agency, serving on the board of the local symphony, and being one of the first women to integrate the local Rotary Club.

Even with all of these activities, Lorine was a prolific writer with a boundless imagination. She also connected with the wider poetry community across the Los Angeles Basin. For five years she hosted a monthly reading with an open mic called Poetry Matters and brought well-known poets to Downey, including former City of Los Angeles Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson. Lorine contributed articles to her local newspaper and curated a weekly poetry column.

The month of February marks her birth and her passing—one week shy of her ninety-third birthday.