All That Lies Between Us by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
© 2007, Guernica Editions, Inc. 87pgs. ISBN: 978-1-55071-261-2

A Review by Grace Cavalieri

Maria Mazziotti Gillan has written eight books previous to this. With each word emerges a vivid account of a life that could have been scarred by environment were it not exposed to so much family good. 18th century Mary Wollstonecraft was the first author to use the word "Nurture" in her treatise, perhaps that's why we associate the word with women writers. Mazziotti-Gillan has made nuturing a literary enterprise, with poems her clothes of memory. I guess she has rewritten the American Dream to make it fit her individual dynamic, a world carefully remembered and preserved on the line - an Italian American who was always studying what it is to make herself American.

Gillan's personal history is invested in conscience so that the art of the poem becomes a spiritual history, a spiritual heritage. Social justice is not written in large abstractions or with consolations of regret, for she did not want to possess the world, she just wanted to become part of it. If you asked her if if she has added to the consciousness of all poetry in honoring heritage, she might decline. She doesn't think like that. It is more that she honors individuality in the world; and, I believe that without stories such as hers the human race would not have progressed as far as it has.  Her self-appraisals are tough. She takes her emotions to task in every poem, but in a way that the more personal the more it is of everyone.

Those critics who attack the personal narrative must admit that when poems exist without hypocrisy, making a gigantic tapestry of self-exploration, there is very little to find wrong. What we notice over and over in Maria Mazziotti-Gillan is her courage to tell the truth. Another poet calls it "saying the hardest things." This is what Mazziotti-Giillan teaches her students and she will settle for nothing less from her own writings. As the body of poetry hardens in America, this language of memory sounds better all the time. The world in all its austerity still has room for the secret behind the heart that takes enormous energy to say, and allows more room for our own sumptuous thoughts.

Narrative poetry has long been at odds with" Language Poets." Language poets have an admirable goal. It seems as if all race, gender, identity is removed so the reader can experience the explosive present. a thing come to life by itself on the page. One understands the essence of words and sometimes wishes for no more, but finally it may be the particulars that stay with us most vibrantly. Charles Olson speaks of this in the poem:

These Days
Whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on,let them
dangle
And the dirt
Just to make clear
Where they come from.

Ancillary to the new book of poems is a critical volume on Maria Mazziotti-Gillan's work,
also published by Guernica Editions. Edited by Sean Thomas Dougherty, it
contains seven essays on Gillan's work by Dougherty and others. This makes a useful compendium to the present set of poems.

From  All That Lies Between Us:

On Thanksgiving This Year           
(excerpt from a long poem. pg.54)
           
Two days before Thanksgiving I take you
to a Parkinson's Research Center           
where the doctor says you are over-           
medicated and cuts back on medicine           
by thirty percent. You start the regimen
the next day and, by Thanksgiving,
you are having so much trouble moving,
Jennifer and I take you across the street
in your collapsible wheelchair and lift
you out of it and onto my niece's sofa.
When we help you to the table, I watch
you turning into an old man on some                                   
when they cut back these drugs."
pill that works the opposite of the fountain
of youth, your head bends forward
so your chin touches your chest
and you are incomprehensible           
when you try to speak.                       
Your fork falls from your hand           
when you try to lift it. I watch you struggle,           
ask in a whisper if I can help you.           
"No," you say, "no, I need to go home."           
We lift you into the wheelchair           
and your body looks like the body
of a ninety-year-old man,
though you are only sixty-five.
At home again, you are unable
to eat your dinner. You have an accident.
Jennifer and I struggle to get your wet
clothes off and put on clean clothes,
and that happens three times,
and by the third time I am about to cry
You say, "Shoot me. Please shoot me."
            "Don't worry," I say.
Don't worry, it will be okay." ....
...

The Mediterranean (pg. 12)

At twenty-three, my mother followed my father
to Paterson from San Mauro, that small town
that clung to a mountaintop. From her window
in that southern Italian village, she glimpsed
the Mediterranean, glistening blue.

In the village, they heard stories of storms
that rose from the sea, swallowed fishermen
and boats. As a child, she heard them, ]
but loved the sea anyway, her own secret
jewel with its incredible light.

In Paterson, inside our tenement, my mother made
the food she'd grown up cooking, filled the house
with the unforgettable aroma of Mediterranean cuisine,
told us stories of San Mauro, the stone house

where she lived, the well where they drew
their water, the stream where they washed their clothes,
the fields built like steps up the sides of the mountain,
but it was the sea she most remembered.

When she spoke of that huge horizon,
sky scrubbed clean by salt air,
sand white as a bleached handkerchief,
we saw the Mediterranean through my mother's eyes,

vivid flowers of Italian summers always with us.