PATRIARCA, Gianna

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Nationality: Canadian (immigrated to Canada in 1960). Born: Ceprano, Italy. Education: York University, B.A. in English, B.Ed. Career: Works as an elementary school teacher, Metropolitan Separate School Board, Ontario. Awards: Nominated for the Milton Acorn Memorial People's poetry award, 1995.

Publications

Poetry

Italian Women and Other Tragedies. Toronto, Guernica Editions, 1994.

Daughters for Sale. Toronto and New York, Guernica Editions, 1997.

Ciao, Baby. Toronto, Guernica Editions, 1999.

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Critical Study: "Gianna Patriarca's 'Tragic' Thought: 'Italian Women and Other Tragedies'" by Anthony Julian Tamburri, in Canadian Journal of Italian Studies (Hamilton, Ontario), 19(53), 1996.

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The poetry of Gianna Patriarca is the record of a woman's attempt to put the past behind her and face the everyday life of the present. Born in rural Italy, Patriarca was taken to Canada at an early age and raised in Toronto. Today her voice is a distinct and vital one that sounds above the mumblings of the city's large Italian population.

Patriarca writes poems about her background and about her ongoing attempt to escape from it and yet to embrace it in terms of her identity and individuality. She writes about these matters in a direct and heartfelt way. Love and affection, anger and pique are characteristic emotions and moods. Expressions of these feelings are moderated by a sympathetic nature, a warmhearted humor, and a willingness to assimilate the slights and cruelties of the world.

The single subject for Patriarca is her Italian-Canadian upbringing, which in her poems is a tangled web of personal relationships with members of her family. Every poet writes about and out of the personal experience of the past, but to a greater degree than with any other Canadian poet Patriarca's subject is her life.

Each of Patriarca's books expands her world from the starting point of her childhood. Italian Women and Other Tragedies (1994) deals with the immigrant experience itself; this is her Italian book. Daughters for Sale (1997) describes her family members; it is her Italian-Canadian book. Ciao, Baby (1999) examines the effects of this mixed paternity on the younger generation; it is her Canadian book. The metamorphosis from an immigrant girl through a troubled young woman to a confident artist and citizen is complete.

The answer to the question of what comes next is found in the characteristics of Patriarca's poems in these collections. The title poem of the first book describes Italian women as those "who were born to give birth":

i have seen them wrap their souls
around their children
and serve their own hearts
in a meal they never
share.

They are the immigrant women she describes in "Returning":

in the sixties we came in swarms
like summer bees
smelling of something strange
wearing the last moist kiss
of our own sky.
we came with heavy trunks
mpty pockets
and a dream

She writes that the small Italian towns of her family seem in memory to be larger than metropolitan Toronto.

Four prose poems appear in the book Daughters for Sale. Reminiscences of Patriarca's own childhood are complemented with advice to the newborn daughter sleeping in her arms in "My Morning Child": "don't awaken too soon, my darling girl / the world can wait." Patriarca skewers religious inhibitions in "A Kiss," male pretensions and anatomy in "Ode to Balls," the inevitability of death in "The Last Season," inconstancy in "Perfect Love," constancy in "My Husband," and child rearing in "A Mother Poem":

my baby is scared of ghosts
and only wants stories with happy endings

sometimes i sneak a story
that makes her cry
then my baby looks like me

If the poems in Patriarca's first two books are dark, there is a quickening of spirit in Ciao, Baby. With the title she is in effect saying, "Good-bye to all that." In "Love Poem" she writes about enjoying breakfast in bed and then a lover's caresses: "this is something / i need to get used to." There is the celebration of marriage in "My English Love":

that i am loved at all
surprises me
that i am loved by you
mystifies me

The passage of time exacts its measure in "Notes on Aging":

i am middle aged now
something i thought
would only happen
to others
has happened to me

With its passing the poet is able to face the past and laugh. In "Two Fat Girls" Patriarca describes her youthful self and a friend sauntering along one of the city's Italian streets and catching the eyes of the boys: "maybe we were just two fat girls … romantic and silly, just two young girls."

Is Italy receding? In "One More Time" Patriarca writes,

my love affair with Italy
is coming to an end
the passion is just a smoldering
a small spark that sometimes ignites
but quickly cools leaving only the memory
all affairs have their time

Are there places to replace Italy? In the poem "Picasso Had Paris" Patriarca mentions Picasso's Paris and Pasolini's Rome. But Toronto is hers too:

i have Clinton and College
on a January night
with a skinny cappuccino
and a DuMaurier light

—John Robert Colombo