Maria Gillan Talks and Reads from 'When the Stars Were Still Visible'

A video from the Planet Poet-Words in Space podcast with Sharon Israel from January 2022 featuring Maria Mazziotti Gillan, poet, teacher, artist, and the visionary founder of the renowned Poetry Center at the Passaic Community College in Paterson, N.J.. 

Here she speaks and reads from her new book, When the Stars Were Still Visible.

“… 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.” 

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.

Poem: Snow Falls Thick

Carolyn Campbell, "Response to Snow Falls Thick"

In the exhibition, "What the Wind Taught Me: An Exhibit of Visual Art & Poetry in Conversation," is Carolyn Campbell's textile art piece "Response to Snow Falls Thick" which is in response to the poem "Snow Falls Thick" by Maria Mazziotti Gillan. The exhibition is at the Tioga Arts Council’s (TAC) gallery located at 179 Front St. in Owego, NY.

Carolyn Campbell states, "My inspiration for this wall hanging is the beautiful poem, "Snow Falls Thick," by Maria Mazziotti Gillan.  There are so many images in this memory that Maria is sharing. I was drawn to the windows frosted with ice, the smell of baking bread and the warmth of being in a familiar place... the coziness of a kitchen. All these images led me to reflect on being in the kitchen and how much time we spend there and how many memories are made there. In deciding to keep it simple, I finally decided on the image of the hands and the act of giving."

Ekphrastic poetry describes visual art; it’s a practice in Western culture at least as old as Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield in the Iliad. The dialogue between visual artists and poets has led to some of our greatest art. In the tradition of ekphrasis, TAC assembled artwork created in and around Tioga County and paired it with poetic responses to that work for its first ekphrastic exhibit in March 2021. This year, they did the reverse. Participating artists were provided a poem and asked to create an original artwork based on that poem. 

Snow Falls Thick

outside the windows of Saint Marguerite retreat house.

If only my mother had not died more than 20 years ago, I'd call her,

tell her, my practical, no-nonsense mother, to stop working

long enough to look out into the softening December world,

here in this peaceful place where no sound enters.

Memory, that savvy Trickster, pulls me back

to the 17th Street kitchen with its coal stove 

and sweet, bread-baking aroma.

It is 1947. We are having a huge blizzard

and all the windows in our apartment frost over in patterns

that seem to me to be exquisitely beautiful.

My mother gives me a potato fresh from the oven.

I hold the hot potato, its crunchy skin, in my hand,

and I realize how much more my mother offered

when she gave me that warmth to hold in my hands.

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, from When the Stars Were Still Visible

The artists represented in the exhibition are from the southern tier of New York. Several poets are local, from Owego, Binghamton, and Ithaca. Others come from across the nation including Washington D.C., New Jersey, Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Maine. Richard Blanco, who President Barack Obama selected in 2012 to serve as the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history, generously granted TAC permission to include his poem, “Cloud Anthem,” in this show. Each artist approached the poem they engaged with from a different angle. There are 16 artists and 16 poets featured in this exhibition.

Information is available online at www.tiogaartscouncil.org/exhibitions 

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's new 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 which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Planet Poet - Words in Space Features Maria Gillan

Planet Poet - Words in Space's latest podcast show features Maria Mazziotti Gillan, poet, teacher, artist, and visionary founder of the renowned Poetry Center at the Passaic Community College in Patterson, N.J. Maria talks about her newest poetry collection When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021).

"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 is pain and obstacles and with all its beauty and grace.” – Stephen F Austin State University Press 

Maria Mazziotti Gillan's 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 which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Planet Poet – Words in Space is a WIOX Community Radio Production

Planet Poet theme music by Robert Cucinotta

Sharon Israel hosts Planet Poet - Words In Space, which airs bi-weekly on WIOX radio Tuesdays at 1pm EST. 91.3 FM.

To stream the episode, go to www.WIOXradio.org

Conversation with Maria Gillan January 18

LISTEN LIVE TUESDAY, January 18th, at 1PM EST to Planet Poet-Words in Space for Sharon Israel's conversation with Maria Mazziotti Gillan, poet, teacher, artist, and visionary founder of the renowned Poetry Center at the Passaic Community College, on her new book, When the Stars Were Still Visible. 

For live streaming, click on www.WIOXradio.org or http://tinyurl.com/wioxcatskills. Best on Chrome and Firefox.  

On When the Stars Were Still Visible “… 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 is pain and obstacles and with all its beauty and grace.” – Stephen F Austin State University Press

Sharon Israel hosts Planet Poet - Words In Space, which airs bi-weekly on WIOX radio Tuesdays at 1pm EST. on 91.3 FM.  The show is also available as a podcast ​on Google podcasts, Spotify podcasts & Apple Podcasts.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's new 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 which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Praise for 'When the Stars Were Still Visible'

"For the Stars Over Paterson" [a review by Dante Di Stefano published online at bestamericanpoetry.com of When the Stars Were Still Visible by Maria Mazziotti Gillan (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2021)

Excerpts from the review:

...Gillan’s poetry challenges fixed notions of American-ness by dramatizing the processes of remembrance so important to the construction of identity in traditional Italian American families. Mazziotti Gillan’s ultimate subject, therefore, is the remembering self.

In the title poem, Mazziotti Gillan writes:

So many memories swirl
like bits of color in a kaleidoscope,
and so impossible to explain.

To full expression’s kaleidoscopic impossibility, Mazziotti Gillan holds up hundreds of shards of specific memories as shining and tightly-packed as the silver balls her Zio Guillermo made from the foil inside his Camel cigarette packs.

The poems that stand out the most in When the Stars Were Still Visible are the ones that either fill in an as yet poetically underexamined corner of the poet’s autobiography or feel like a resolution to a part of the poet’s autobiography that has supplied the material for many earlier poems. “Taking my Brother to the Barber” provides an example of the former kind of poem. In this poem, a sibling relationship spanning more than seventy-five years spirals out in a bittersweet aria ending on the brother’s huge dark uncomplaining eyes. 

“My Son the Lawyer Quotes Dylan Thomas to Give Me Courage” provides an example of the latter kind of poem. In poems from previous volumes, such as “Is This the Way It Is Between Mothers and Sons?” from All that Lies Between Us, Mazziotti Gillan has explored the distance between an adult son and aging mother. However, in “My Son the Lawyer Quotes Dylan Thomas…” the distance collapses as the son reaches out to encourage his mother using the lines of the Welsh poet’s most famous villanelle. Just as many of her poems end in uplift, “My Son the Lawyer…” resolves (in uplift) the mother-son story arc that runs throughout her body of work.

...She is singing. As she says in the poem “Last May in San Mauro, Cilento, 2017”: "I hold the memories close to give me comfort when I am most afraid.” Reading her work, I feel less afraid of aging and what comes after. I feel her warmth. I hear her singing. I see the stars over Paterson. What else could a reader ask for?

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's new 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 which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Maria Gillan Reading for Rattlecast August 8

Rattle magazine's podcast, Rattlecast 105, features Maria Mazziotti Gillan, a frequent contributor to Rattle and interviewee of issue #46. The program is on Sunday, August 8 from 12-2 pm EDT (9 am PDT).

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs), the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions).

She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. Maria Gillan is Bartle Professor and Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at Binghamton University-SUNY. She has published more than twenty books of and about poetry and has edited four anthologies. Her most recent book is When the Stars Were Still Visible (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2021)

Find more info and all of Maria's books at mariagillan.com

As always, the program will also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: rattle.com/rattlecast/  This Week's Prompt is "At the library."

The Rattlecast live streams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Watch live or later in the archive, both at youtu.be/gv39j2qu76w

Check into the Facebook event link facebook.com/events/1006770566569708/

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's new 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 which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Poem: When the Stars Were Still Visible

Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s brand new poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible.  The book is published by Stephen F. Austin University Press and can be ordered now at tamupress.com and via Amazon. This is the title poem from the new book.

When the Stars Were Still Visible

In the photo, I am on the back steps 

of the six-family tenement

on 5th Avenue in Paterson where I was born. 

I am squinting into the sun,

my nose wrinkled, my eyes closed against the glare. 

I am two years old, my hair a curly cap on my head. 

It looks blonde, though I know it couldn’t have been,

and wonder if I am remembering my daughter at two, 

sitting in the little rocking chair on the front porch 

on Oak Street in Kansas City. 

Her hair was all blonde ringlets.

Strange how memory is like the fragments of a puzzle:

Remember the green blackout shades 

in our apartment in Paterson in 1944.

Remember my father dressed as a devil for a costume party 

at the Società Cilentana on Butler Street.

Remember the silver ball Zio Guillermo made 

from the foil inside the Camel cigarettes he smoked 

that stained his fingers yellow.

So many memories swirl

like bits of color in a kaleidoscope, 

and so impossible to explain.

Remember 17th Street with Mrs. Gianelli 

who always fainted when she got upset 

and the old man who ran the candy store

that was so filthy no one bought anything there, 

and the big garage in the Gianelli’s backyard 

where we put on plays until something happened;

I don’t know what, something to do with playing doctor

behind our improvised curtains

and then we weren’t allowed to play there anymore.

Remember Zio Guillermo’s garden

with tomatoes and zucchini and corn,

and the vacant lot next door that seemed so huge, 

you’d think we had all of New Jersey to play in, 

until I see it years later,

covered with asphalt and garages 

and I realize that the entire block,

 

my world until I was eleven, wasn’t that big

and certainly the lot, small, and now so ugly.

Remember Paterson when the stars were still visible in the sky 

and I didn’t know 17th Street was in a city.

Remember the sweet smell of marigolds and daisies in the vacant lot, 

and our house full of food and laughter,

our family together under the kitchen light, 

the company of honorary aunts and uncles.

Outside, our friends gathered to play stickball in the street, 

hours to fill with games and books and dreaming.

How lucky I was, how lucky, 

Paterson glowing and sparkling 

like a silver ball in my hands.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's new 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 which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

New Poetry Collection by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s latest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible. It will be released in April 2021. 

The book is published by Stephen F. Austin University Press 
and can be pre-ordered now at
  tamupress.com and via Amazon

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's most recent books are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow and the poetry collection, What Blooms in Winter. Her collection of poems paired with some of her paintings is The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets. Her artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.