Girl Hurt

by E.J. Miller Laino

E.J. Miller Laino is a tough, honest poet. She is liable to say anything. Her poems are startling, from their frank treatment of sex and death to the abundance of hard, true metaphors. This is more than a confrontation with daily pain and fear, however; these poems celebrate survival, the durability of family, the liberation of unheard voices, especially female and working-class voices. The poems of E.J. Miller Laino transcend, with all the power and beauty of flight. --Martín Espada

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening epigraph is a quote from Muriel Rukeyser, “Pay attention to what they tell you to forget.” Miller Laino pays attention, and convinces her reader to also pay attention. Pay attention to the past, to family, to the often disenfranchised voices of blue-collar workers. Her writing is thoughtful. The speaker varies perspective throughout the collection, from a young girl’s point of view to the adult woman’s, from daughter to mother. Her mother’s death, both imagined and real, is an undercurrent that runs through all three sections of this book.
The first time my mother died
she was actually eating veal parmigiana
at Monty’s garden, an Italian restaurant
(First Night)

And then, the real death.
It’s 4 a.m.
The kitchen light is on.
I enter her home, touch everything
I know she’s touched, these flowers,
this card, before I call the relatives
to say she is dead.
(May 17th)

Miller Laino has mastered the turn, demonstrating in poem after poem how the past influences the present. The title poem, which ends the first section, contains an epigraph from the Boston Globe about an immigrant whose seven-year-old daughter tried to save him as he jumped.
I read about Lyvia, daughter
of Michael Kataevi; she was there
at the window, screaming
in a language unintelligible to citizens of New York,
Minsk, or any other city where
a daughter grabs onto a father
who is leaping from a fourth story window.
The speaker then tells us “There is no news account/ of my grandfather’s suicide,” and shows the reader how a girl can also be hurt by the family story, even if she didn’t witness the event.

One of my favorite poems is the final one, a universal account of trying to help a child complete a homework assignment when the worksheet has been lost. The closing thoughts blossom out far beyond the homework.
Both of us worry about making mistakes.
We stand at the window for a long time,

trying perhaps, to understand
why some things disappear
and stay lost forever, while others

come back to us, this moon,
crowning like the head of a baby
through a dark slit of a sky.
(Lunar Eclipse)