When the Stars Were Still Visible: Gillan, Maria Mazziotti: 9781622889136: Amazon.com: Books (original) (raw)

I have read, over and over, every poem in Maria Gillan's new poetry collection, When the Stars Were Still Visible. I'm going to read them all again! Every poem is a jewel of rememberence and of triumph, especially over the shame Maria felt so often as a child of immigrants growing up in a country that wasn't always very welcoming. These poems reveal a time of family, food, and closeness that is less common today. This book is a treasure and each poem is a gem. Here's one of my favorites:
Meatloaf and Hamburger Helper
Growing up, my mother cooked
macaroni and gravy, meatballs
and braciola, spinach, lentil soup,
and roasted chicken and potatoes,
made zappole, big salads fresh from the garden,
zucchini with rosemary,
meals so delicious I can still taste them.
When my children were growing up,
my mother-in-law taught me
to make American food that
my husband liked because
he grew up on it—so I learned
how to make pot roast, and leg of lamb,
and stew, and roast beef,
pork chops, and steak, and baked potatoes.
She taught me how to make meatloaf
which was cheap and could be used
for one meal plus sandwiches.
She taught me to make meals with Hamburger Helper
which my mother called junk. Years later, my stomach
turns at the thought of Hamburger Helper,
the greasy feel of it, the fake
chemical taste of sauce and spices,
flavor created in a lab,
but when I served those meals,
so different from anything my mother
ever cooked, I felt I had arrived
in middle-class America, that I now belonged
in the land that almost guaranteed you’d die
of a heat attack before you could reach old age
and not the land of my father,
too poor to buy all this meat
even if he had wanted it, my father
who died at ninety-two sitting in the sun in his garden,
the aroma of tomatoes and peppers and zucchini
perfuming the air around him.
~Maria Mazzioti Gillan, When the Stars Were Still Visible, Texas A&M University Press Consortium, Nacogdoches, Texas, 2021.