All That Lies Between Us

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Overview

Constructed in the form of a memoir, these poems take on an emotional tone as the author details the story of her life. The collection is populated by her memories of childhood, courtships and marriage, family illness, children, and grandchildren. At its core is a woman struggling to deal with all the complexities of love and the difficulties of achieving compassion and tenderness in the face of adversity. Brave, honest, and beautiful, these poems shed new light on what it means to be human. {Guernica Editions}

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550714708
Publisher:	Guernica Editions Inc
Publication date:	01/01/2009
Series:	Essential Poets series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	136
File size:	124 KB

About the Author

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic Country Community College, and Editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is the author of over a dozen works. Among her many honors, she received the 2008 American Book Award, and 2011 Barnes and Noble Writers For Writers Award. Other awards received by Gillan include the May Sarton Award, the Fearing Houghton Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Poetry, and the American Literary Translators Association Award through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pietro di Donato award, and the John Fante award from the Sons of Italy in America. She lives in New Jersey. 

Table of Contents

People Who Live Only in Photographs     7
Little House on the Prairie     9
What Did I Know About Love     11
The Mediterranean     12
Christmas Story     13
There Was No Pleasing My Mother     15
Breakfast at IHOP     17
I Want to Write a Poem to Celebrate     18
Superman     19
I Am Thinking of the Dress     21
My Father's Fig Tree Grew in Hawthorne, New Jersey     23
My Sister and Frank Sinatra     25
Sunday Dinners at My Mother's House     27
My Father Always Drove     29
Spike-Heels     31
Trying to Get You to Love Me     32
Housework and Buicks with Fins     35
Driving into Our New Lives     37
Nighties     38
In the Movies No One Ever Ages     40
Who Knew How Lonely the Truth Can Be     41
I Wish I Knew How to Tell You     43
What a Liar I Am     45
On an Outing to Cold Spring     47
Selective Memory     49
Your Voice on the Phone Wobbles     51
On Thanksgiving This Year     54
I Never Tell People     56
Do YouKnow What It Is I Feel?     59
What I Remember     61
I Walk Through the Rooms of Memory     63
Nothing Can Bring Back the Dead     65
What I Can't Face About Someone I Love     68
Is This the Way It Is with Mothers and Sons?     70
Everything We Don't Want Them to Know     72
At Eleven, My Granddaughter     73
My Daughter's Hands     75
My Grandson and GI Joe     77
What We Pass On     79
The Dead Are Not Silent     81
What the Dead No Longer Need     83
I Want to Celebrate     85
Couch Buddha     87

Editorial Reviews

"These poems are powerful in their honesty, their passion and their grief. They take us deep into the labyrinth of our humanity and—in the face of loss and death—show us the paradox of love in the center of our being." —Diane di Prima, poet and author, Memoirs of a Beatnik

From the Publisher