Maria Mazziotti Gillan - poet and artist

August 12, 2026

Poem: Love Poem To My Husband Of Thirty-one Years

Love Poem To My Husband Of Thirty-one Years

I watch you walk up our front path,

the entire right side of your body,

stiff and unbending, your leg,

dragging on the ground,

your arm not moving.

Six different times you ask me

the date of our daughter's wedding,

seem surprised each time,

forget who called, though you can name

obscure desert animals,

and every detail of events

that took place in 3 B.C.

You complain now of pain

in your muscles, of swimming at the Y

where a 76-year-old man tells you

you swim too slowly.

I imagine a world in which

you cannot move.

Most days, I force myself to look

only into the past;

remember you, singing

and playing your guitar: "Black,

black is the color of my true love's hair,"

you sang, and each time you came into a room

how my love for you caught in my throat,

how handsome you were, how strong

and muscular, how the sun

lit your blond hair.

Now I pretend not to notice

the trouble you have buttoning

your shirt, and yes, I am terrified

and no, I cannot tell you.

The future is a murky lake.

I am afraid of the monsters

who wait just below its surface.

Even in our mahogany bed, I am not safe.

Each day, I swim toward

everything I didn't want to know.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

August 03, 2026

Maria Mazziotti Gillan on Rattlecast

Rattlecast 105 featured Maria Mazziotti Gillan, a frequent contributor to Rattle and interviewee of issue #46.

July 28, 2026

Maria Gillan's 'What Blooms in Winter' and the Patterns of Memory

What Blooms in Winter is Maria Mazziotti Gillan's 2016 collection that was widely praised by critics and poets for its "unsparing honesty" and its ability to find beauty in the hardships of aging, grief, and the immigrant experience.

Critics consistently highlight the emotional depth of the collection, noting that Gillan’s work stands apart from the often abstract nature of contemporary academic poetry.

Grace Cavalieri (Washington Independent Review of Books): "I’ll read this book if ever I forget the purpose of poetry—if ever I start believing it’s only about the adornment of language. This is the stuff that made humankind want to speak, to write."

Kenneth Scambray (L'Italo Americano): "What has always distinguished her poetry... is her unsparing honesty in her confrontation of some of the most intimate details of family life... her poetry has always taken great risks."

This collection is structured as a narrative journey through time. It juxtaposes the "cold-water flats" of the 1950s with the "empty house" of the present.

In Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s collection, the "blooms in winter" are both a literal image of resilient nature and a metaphor for the strength found in the later stages of life. She suggests that the most beautiful things—memory, gratitude, and a sense of self—often only fully "bloom" when the easier seasons of youth have passed, and the "ground is hard."

The "Winter" of the title refers to the later stages of life, widowhood, and physical decline, but the "Blooms" are the "daily miracles" Gillan identifies, such as the ability to hold a pen, a phone call from a child, or the sensory memories of a mother’s starched linens.

She argues that we only learn true gratitude when we "bloom" through these limitations.

"The Lace Tablecloth and the Patterns of Memory" is a poem that uses physical objects as "anchors" for her memories. The poem centers on a trunk full of linens and lace that Gillan's mother brought from Italy. These handcrafted items represent her pride, artistic skill, and the culture she carried with her.

Her mother's dedication is shown through her penny-saving from a 25-cent-an-hour factory job in Paterson, in order to buy linens. She would also take the tablecloths home after family holidays to wash and iron them, returning them pristine.

The lace acts as a physical manifestation of memory. Decades later, the memories of eating as a family on these tablecloths serve as an enduring symbol of the speaker's roots and of her mother's deep, silent love.

July 22, 2026

Maria Gillan Goes Back to School 18

Maria Mazziotti Gillan returned to School 18 in Paterson, where she had been a student as a young girl, and met with students from the school's poetry club in 2016.

As covered by a reporter in "Gillan Poet's return to her Paterson school inspires heartfelt writing," she shared her memories of growing up a short, skinny, shy, poor immigrant kid on 17th Street in the 1950s.

Maria read her own emotional poems and students read their own poems aloud, some of them tearing up at times. “It means what you had to write is important,” Gillan told them.

“Who would want to listen to a poor immigrant?” she told the students. She was very shy and “didn't speak up until I was 40,” she said.

She told the students that her teachers at School 18 left their marks - some for the better, some not. One teacher showed she cared with a simple touch. “I always felt like I grew 10 feet when she touched my shoulder. And that's what a teacher can do for you.”

“Don't let anyone tell you you're limited by where you grew up,” she said.

PS 18

Public School #18: Paterson, New Jersey
by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Miss Wilson’s eyes, opaque
as blue glass, fix on me:
"We must speak English.
We’re in America now."
I want to say, "I am American,"
but the evidence is stacked against me.

My mother scrubs my scalp raw, wraps
my shining hair in white rags
to make it curl. Miss Wilson
drags me to the window, checks my hair
for lice. My face wants to hide.

At home, my words smooth in my mouth,
I chatter and am proud. In school,
I am silent, grope for the right English
words, fear the Italian word
will sprout from my mouth like a rose,

fear the progression of teachers
in their sprigged dresses,
their Anglo-Saxon faces.

Without words, they tell me
to be ashamed.
I am.
I deny that booted country
even from myself,
want to be still
and untouchable
as these women
who teach me to hate myself.

Years later, in a white
Kansas City house,
the Psychology professor tells me
I remind him of the Mafia leader
on the cover of Time magazine.

My anger spits
venomous from my mouth:

I am proud of my mother,
dressed all in black,
proud of my father
with his broken tongue,
proud of the laughter
and noise of our house.

Remember me, Ladies,
the silent one?
I have found my voice
and my rage will blow
your house down.

from What We Pass On: Collected Poems: 1980-2009