Customer Reviews

Italian Women In Black Dresses (Essential Poets Series 116)

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This is such a brilliant, risk-taking moving book, I can only recommend that you read it immediately.You won't be sorry.Here we have poems about growing up, incidents in high school and grammar school. the life of an ethnic Italian neighborhood policed by the old ladies in their black dresses. The book traces this woman's life through girlhood, the books she read like Nancy Drew and the stars she admired like Doris Day to a time when her husband of many years becomes critically ill with Parkinson's Disease. I don't know how anyone could put his down without wanting to return to it again and again. Beautiful!!!!
Also read Maria Mazziotti Gillan's other books. She is a poet who transforms the ordinary, sees below its surface, and allows us to see as well.

Though this poetry is provincial in form and content, it has a heart and its content often transcends its craft. Still, its the sort of poetry that the average reader who is not in love with the craft and knowledgeable about it will enjoy. What it lacks in sophistication, it often makes up for in feeling and insight into the human family in its everyday life--especially the Italian American family of New Jersey. A pleasant and easy read, if not terribly original in style.