Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Maria Mazziotti Gillan Poems

Maria Mazziotti Gillan Biography

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is an American poet. Maria Mazziotti Gillan was born March 12, 1940 in an Italian enclave in Paterson, New Jersey's Riverside neighborhood. She attended Paterson public schools and is a graduate of Eastside High School. She graduated from Seton Hall University and from New York University with an MA In Literature. She enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Drew University from 1977-1980.She married Dennis Gillan; they have two children, John and Jennifer, and two grandchildren, Caroline and Jackson. She is the Founder /Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review, and is the Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-SUNY.)

The Best Poem Of Maria Mazziotti Gillan

My Daughter At 14, Christmas Dance, 1981

Panic in your face, you write questions
to ask him. When he arrives,
you are serene, your fear
unbetrayed. How unlike me you are.

After the dance,
I see your happiness; he holds
your hand. Though you barely speak,
your body pulses messages I can read

all too well. He kisses you goodnight,
his body moving toward yours, and yours
responding. I am frightened, guard my
tongue for fear my mother will pop out

of my mouth. 'He is not shy,' I say. You giggle,
a little girl again, but you tell me he
kissed you on the dance floor. 'Once?'
I ask. 'No, a lot.'

We ride through rain-shining 1 a.m.
streets. I bite back words which long
to be said, knowing I must not shatter your
moment, fragile as a spun-glass bird,

you, the moment, poised on the edge of
flight, and I, on the ground, afraid.

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