Travelling Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s ‘Open Road’

Elisabetta Marino (University of Rome) has published "From Wastelands to Homelands: Travelling Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s ‘Open Road’ and Signifying Resistance in When the Stars Were Still"

Abstract

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is probably one of the most famous and thought-provoking contemporary artists of Italian descent. She is the author of numerous poetry books and has recently started a parallel career as a painter.

By focusing on her most recent poetry collection entitled When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021), this essay sets out to explore the strategies she has articulated to heal her individual and collective wounds (as an Italian American), while resisting the annihilation of her cultural background. Throughout her life, she has been compelled to cross several emotional wastelands, eventually managing to carve her own path to multiple places (both physical and

imaginary) she could call “home”. 

Excerpt
"... in order to resist trauma, the poet, first of all, acknowledges and delves into the condition

of fragmentation and disconnectedness she, like many other Italian Americans, had to grapple with. Then, she undermines its upsetting and destabilizing potential when she embraces vulnerability while uncovering the unexpected beauty and possibilities of life even in its

most tragic moments. By re-membering experiences, instead of hiding or suppressing them, by choosing wisely how to remember and what to focus on, Maria Mazziotti Gillan succeeds in healing individual and collective wounds, thus turning wastelands into homelands."

When the Stars Were Still Visible: A Close Reading

The initial poem, which lends its title to the collection, is centered on the act of remembering, even though, as the poet maintains,“memory is like the fragments of a puzzle” (Mazziotti Gillan 2021: 1), difficult to compose into a single, organic image. This concept is further illustrated a few lines later when fleeting recollections are equated to “bits of color in a kaleidoscope,/ and so impossible to explain” (1). A general feeling of secrecy and suspension dominates the second poem, “The Children of Immigrants,” where Maria Mazziotti Gillan finally pieces together the harrowing story of her paternal grandmother, deserted by her husband, back in Italy, when she was barely twenty-four. The poet herself had gathered the details of her vicissitudes only late in her life since, as she observes, “children of immigrants pick up bits and pieces/ over the years to create a picture."

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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.