The words of Bronx Rhapsody move to the beat of Maria Meli's heart and the wrenching of her core. In her poems, one senses her relief and ecstasy for having been able to let go. This second-generation Sicilian American takes us on a long journey, one that sings of her beginnings within the household of her immigrant family, enclosed by its traditions in its bucolic Bronx setting, and poignantly portrays her coming of age and her pilgrimage to adulthood. The trajectory embraces a luscious eight-decade lifespan from the time she was born in the years before World War II until the present.
But this volume of poetry is by no means a book of praise poems crafted after the dinner parties and rituals of warm Sicilian American families. Maria Meli allows us to bear witness to the challenges imposed upon her becoming a woman, all set against a poetic tapestry woven by a narrative of abuses and betrayals that include the Sturm und Drang of falling in and out of love and the joy only children can bring forth in the Boogie Down against the ever-changing backdrop of the City that Never Sleeps.
María Meli, just like her predecessors Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, and Charles Bukowski, is a poet who is not afraid of exposing, denouncing, or uplifting humankind. She's both raw and sublime. In her work, Meli questions assimilation against authenticity and condemns the hypocrisy of American politics and the proliferation of inequality, particularly amongst people of color, women, and the poor. Despite some scathingly ugly portrayals, her words, on the whole, reflect the poet's hope for all of us to rise above violence, erasure, poverty, and prejudice.
With such a spirit of optimism, Maria Meli also believes that we owe it to ourselves to feel, to name our own demons and dance with them because, in her view, it is precisely through the process of acceptance and forgiveness that starts within the self and radiates from us to our loved ones that we are genuinely able to open our hearts and embrace kindness and generosity as our daily mantra. Indeed, for Maria, achieving such a level of consciousness in our interactions with others can generate a kind of communal rebirth capable of restoring the dignity of all human life.
Editorial Review of Maria Meli's Bronx Rhapsody in Dancing With Muses
