Poem: In Third Grade I Fell in Love (With Commentary)

In Third Grade I Fell in Love

with language. The poems and stories, read aloud to us
in the dusty classrooms of PS 18 in Paterson, New Jersey,  
had a music that lifted me up above the scarred desks,
names and hearts carved into them
by generations of children, bored from the torture
of sitting still for hours.
 
For me, in my shy skin, the spaces in the school
meant for recess or gym were terrifying,
but inside the classroom, I loved
the books we read and the ones the teachers read to us.

At home, we spoke a southern Italian dialect
that brought Italy to 17th street.
But outside, I was in America.
though wary that I wasn't American enough.

In the classroom, I learned that English had a different kind of music,
one I could move to as if I were dancing.
I loved the poems that repeated themselves in my brain.
After I memorized a poem, I could carry it with me,
as though I had slipped it in my pocket
and could slip it out whenever I was alone and afraid.

My parents could not read to us in English,
but those teachers, all the ones I never thought to thank,
opened the door into a world far from my Italian family,
its aroma of tomato sauce bubbling on the stove,
of rosemary and mint growing outside the back door,
bread baking in the oven.

In books, I could find the way to leave the skin I was born in,
to enter the worlds that appeared on the very first page.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Was your poem, “In Third Grade I Fell in Love,” geared to a specific audience or for anyone who would listen?

Well, I hope when I write a poem that it is clear and direct enough to reach anyone who reads it. I was prompted out of my own need to explain my love of poetry written in English, particularly since I was an immigrant child who did not speak English when I went to school. I also wrote it in gratitude to all the teachers I never thanked for reading aloud to us in English and for making me hear the music of the language when it was spoken aloud. My own parents couldn’t speak English and couldn’t read to us in English, but those teachers gave me a gift that I can never repay. It’s only now, so many years later, that I wish I had written to them to thank them. Of course, now it’s too late. But wherever their spirits are, I hope they feel my love for them and my gratitude.

I hope this poem speaks to other people who also learned to love the way the language sounded when read aloud and learned to speak through writing when they couldn’t articulate what they felt inside to have conversations, as I could not, because I was so shy.

In the poem, you say that “The poems and stories read aloud to us in the dusty classroom of PS 18 in Paterson, New Jersey had a music that lifted me up above the scarred desks, names and hearts carved into them by generations of children bored with what, for many of them, must have been the torture of hours sitting still.” 

Could you say more about what you mean by “music” there? Is there a danger that fewer will hear that music today because of all the distractions around us, such as the constant temptation of social media?

When I say music, I mean that in a poem, there is a kind of interior music that carries you along— at least it’s music that I can hear. Certainly, Italian has its own kind of music because it is my first language. I will always love the sound of it; but English opened so many doors for me and led me to worlds I could not have imagined when I was a child. If you close your eyes and listen to a point where out loud, you hear a rhythm and a sound, it helps you to memorize the poem in order to carry it with you. For me, even when I revise poems, I have to read them out loud to hear when the sound falls flat. It helps me to revise the poem. I also find it helpful when working with my students to assist them with revisions, if I read the poem out loud so they can hear where it goes off.

There is a constant temptation today to spend so many hours on social media. I think it’s not just that we don’t listen to poetry being read out loud, but that we don’t read. I would suggest to students who are not particularly fond of reading that they might want to get audiobooks and listen to them in the car. The more you get to hear the language, the more it becomes a part of your body. The more it becomes a part of that instinctive place where poems come from, the more you will be changed by the writing and by what the writer is trying to tell you.

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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.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan To Be Honored

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is to be honored during the 57th Annual Italian American Studies Association (IASA) Conference at Montclair State University held November 6-9, 2025.

Intersecting Transitalia in Communities: Nation(s), Transnation(s), Neighborhood(s) is the theme of this year’s conference. Community in the Italian diaspora, historically and in the present day will be explored in programs and panels addressing how, historically, Italians have worked in building their local communities and how they have attempted (successfully or not) to bridge (linguistic, cultural, etc.) gaps across communities throughout the country or even the world.

On Thursday, November 6, the conclusion of the conference's first day, there will be the Opening Plenary and Welcome Reception at the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, 8 Yogi Berra Drive on the Montclair State University campus. 

Information and registration at https://www.italianamericanstudies.net/cpages/2025-montclair 

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is an artist, poet, and professor. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, and is the founding editor of the Paterson Literary Review. Gillan is a Bartle Professor and Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at Binghamton University-SUNY. She has published more than 20 books of poetry and four literature anthologies. Her 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. Gillan is the 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).  Her  website is MariaGillan.com.

 

Poem: Moll Flanders, Zia Louisa, and Me

Moll Flanders, Zia Louisa, and Me

Ah, Moll Flanders, of all the characters  
in those novels I read when I was still young and in grad school,
it's you I remember, 
flamboyant, sensual, in love with life.
You always looked for the “Main Chance”
and I, who can barely remember a name
five minutes after I hear it, remember yours.
I knew you were self-serving, but I loved 
that you never lied about it, 
that you never made excuses, 
and I imagine you trying to make your way 
in 17th Century England, where a woman on her own
would have been vulnerable, a victim.
You remind me of my Zia Louisa,
that woman who married four times, 
who wore a tan-colored corset with lace stays 
that had to be pulled tight to hold in 
her large breasts and belly, 
who loved to dance the Tarantella, 
her whole body exhilarating 
in moving and stomping.
And though I know Moll only through a male writer’s portrayal, 
I know Zia Louisa from my childhood, 
watched her move
like an armored vehicle through life, 
past three dead husbands and onto a fourth, 
handsome, elegant Zio Guillermo.
They lived in the small apartment above us 
on 17th Street in Paterson, NJ.  
My mother told me that in the night she’d hear 
Zia Louisa crying, but in the morning 
she’d come down the back steps, 
her cotton dress stiff with starch, 
her lace handkerchief tucked in her sleeve, 
and she’d be smiling and laughing.
She never told my mother 
what sorrow she carried hidden in her sleeve.
The world does not need to know; 
it only wants to pretend nothing is wrong, 
and you are mistaken
if you think you heard wild sobbing 
in the night.  

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

Is this poem based on a true experience? If so, how did learning this about your aunt impact you?

Yes, the Moll Flanders poem is based on a true experience.  My aunt and uncle lived upstairs from us on 17th St. in Paterson, New Jersey. My aunt always put on a brave face. She was so full of life and laughter, but part of that was a smokescreen to hide what was really going on in her life. 

Knowing that made me realize that so much is hidden in our lives because we are afraid to let other people know about our suffering. In fact, if people really want to know about the good that poetry does for us, it is that poems allow us to peel away the layers that we use to protect ourselves, the masks we wear because we’re afraid. I learned from my poems how painful it is to keep so much hidden.

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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.

Maria Gillan on Inspiration

Maria Gillan was interviewed by students during a visit, readings and workshops at Eastern Connecticut University. Several of those interview responses will be excerpted on this blog.

Do you ever fear that you will run out of childhood memories to write about?

I don’t think I’ll ever run out of memories to write about.  Our lives are so layered, so full of the people we’ve loved and lost, and the times that we miss, the things we regret. The older I get, the more I remember, and I try to keep those details as though they were pressed flowers in a book. I use them in my poems to bring a time, a place, or a person back to life.

Do you believe in inspiration? If so, what people or experiences have impacted you the most?

Yes, I believe in inspiration, but I think that inspiration comes not because you ask it to, but because it wants to. I think you have to sit your behind in a chair and you have to allow yourself to write. And it doesn’t have to start out as a poem. It can start out as a journal entry or just random notes, and suddenly, before you realize it, the muse arrives and brings you a poem almost on a silver platter. It’s a wonderful thing about poetry - that it comes to you when you are least deserving.

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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.