Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
When the Stars Were Still Visible

When the Stars Were Still Visible

Gillan, Maria Mazziotti

Paperback

General Poetry

ISBN10: 1622889134
ISBN13: 9781622889136
Publisher: Stephen F. Austin University Press
Published: Apr 13 2021
Pages: 90
Weight: 0.43
Height: 0.30 Width: 5.98 Depth: 9.02
Language: English

In When the Stars Were Still Visible, Maria Mazziotti Gillan gives us the truth, unedited and directly from the heart. This gorgeously elegiac collection creates an arc that articulates her understanding of aging and gaining wisdom. In the central poem, Claiming My True Name, she finally embraces her Italian roots after confessing her desire to slide right into the life of America, and realizes with sorrow what denying her Italian parents and the cold-water flat, has cost her: How many hours have I spent drowning in shame...ashamed of our poverty, my immigrant parents, my father's limp, his paralyzed leg dragging behind him...my own dark skin...my cheap clothes. Throughout the second half of the collection, Gillan subtly acknowledges the shift in her own life as it parallels the lack of understanding between herself and her own children, her own frailty with that of her father and her husband. In the last poem, Celebration in Albidona, there is an unexpected encounter that results in an epiphany, which bridges the old country to the new. It is as if this book rose out of an alchemist's compound comprised of Calabrian limestone and the cement of the back stoop on 17th Street in Paterson, New Jersey, where Mazziotti Gillan grew up. By the end of this poignant and resonant book, the poet accepts her double heritage with all its pain and obstacles and with all its beauty and grace.

Also from

Gillan, Maria Mazziotti

View All

Also in

General Poetry

View All