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Place is loosely interpreted in Marianne Gambaro’s chapbook, Do NOT Stop for Hitchhikers, published by Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky. The 23 poems transport the reader beyond Gambaro’s home in idyllic Western Massachusetts on journeys which include the emigration of a 14-year-old girl from Italy to be the replacement wife in America for her sister who died in childbirth. Gambaro again captures the immigrant experience vividly in Euro Mutts, describing the struggle and sacrifices of these newly-arrived Americans. She ventures inside the mind of a woman with dementia and a man who brings his dog with him to witness his suicide. Her poems are inspired by people and places–a boy negotiating with a neighbor to buy tulips for his mother for Mother’s Day, an astronaut playing her flute while she floats in the international space station, and a little girl gaily celebrating her birthday on the observation deck of the Twin Towers, a scene poignant in retrospect. The majesty and lore of the American West are portrayed in such poems and Bandelier and Meteor Crater, Arizona. And the award-winning Yellowstone in Winter gives us a glimpse of the stark beauty and survival skills of wildlife in this very special place. The title poem, Do NOT Stop for Hitchhikers, is a road poem in which the narrator is driving (fleeing?) back to New England after attending a funeral in New Jersey and recalls a story about an Italian immigrant executed in Sing Sing Prison. A former journalist, Gambaro’s style is narrative and straightforward, making this book accessible to poetry lovers and non-devotees alike. As the poet Kevin Pilkington has written about Do NOT Stop for Hitchhikers: Go on this journey with Gambaro and you will discover through her eyes what everyone else overlooks. So read her poems, take this journey with her and enrich your life.
