Mariela Griffor

HOUSE is a love affair between the poet and Chile. While making real the struggles of war, becoming an expatriate and the alienation that accompanies the immersion in a new culture, Griffor also conveys the beauty and nostalgia she feels for her home country. She commands our attention, and we share her sadness, compassion, anger and hope. Influenc... ed greatly by the American lyric tradition, Mariela's poems play softly and skillfully; the smooth strum lingers in the readers ears. Mariela Griffor is the author of EXILIANA. Born in the city of Concepcion in southern Chile, she attended the University of Santiago and the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She left Chile for an involuntary exile in Sweden in 1985. Ms. Griffor lives in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, where she is founder of the Institute for Creative Writers at Wayne State University and Publisher of Marick Press. In terms of subject matter, House is about pillow talk, stars in the sky, and childhood innocence. It is about torture chambers, bloodshed done in the name of God. It praises love for an aunt, a grandmother, a daughter, a friend. Its prayers need answers from a God sometimes not felt or found. Have we offended You?, the poet pleads. The words of House spring from a mind whose mother tongue is not Englishtherefore we can forgive her sometimes far from bulls-eye diction. For example, in Twenty-Nine: Yellow Ribbons, she writes, My skin is curdled with hope. This expression is odd. When speaking of hope, a writer should select a word more positively charged, such as brimming or shining. Yet these kinds of mistakes can be forgiven, as Griffors art does the important job of reminding one that murder is murder in any country; tears are tears no matter what the nationality. more ... Mariela Griffor transcends the terrible and sordid hell of our sociopolitical everyday to penetrate into territories of moving sands...zones where the imagination leaves the body's prison to lead us to new experiences, subtle, hopeful, contradictory, and in the end, ...Read More