PABELLON DE JIM PATTISON Y DESPUES / JIM PATTISON PAVILION AND AFTER

About the Book

Jim Pattison Pavillion and After, Jazz, Abbadon, Archaelogical Sites, Bestiary, and the Spanish versions are the five sections comprising Maria Giovanna Tomsich’s third collection of poems covering the ground of a life still scrutinized by the author. Is this the poet’s task? According to MGT, the analysis of levels of consciousness and as far as they are accessible, levels of the subconscious connect every individual with his or her environment. Relation that generates responsibilities and action. Jim Pattison, of about a hundred and ninety free verses, is a composition of gratitude to health workers in the pavilion, to the place, especially the space allowed to art, always therapeutic regardless of the viewer’s rejection or acceptance. In this poem, the experience of illness is intertwined with the reading of the playwright Euripides (485 BC), with his tragedy Iphigenia Among the Taurians. Viewing Ken Burns’s documentary about jazz inspired her to express both her admiration for the documentary and her attraction to jazz besides giving her the opportunity for some autobiographical touches. Abbadon satirises, one of aging’s quirks, forever losing and looking for misplaced objects. The humorous tone conceals graver themes, like greed. The archeological sites are a constant source of interest and fascination for MGT as are animals because environment concerns are transparent.

About the Author

Maria Giovanna Tomsich was born in Fiume, Italy (until 1945, now Croatia). She immigrated to Canada in 1951. She worked as a lab assistant at the Western branch of the Connaught Laboratories for seven years while taking courses at the same time. After her BA, she changed direction by embarking on an MA in Spanish literature. Thanks to a teaching assistant scholarship, she pursued her PhD at Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island). Thanks to yet another scholarship granted by the Canada Council, she was able to conduct research for her doctoral thesis in Spain. All her publications deal with eighteenth-century topics. As in her previous poetry books, Poemario de Spanish Bank and Errabundos / Wanderers, she composes her poems in Spanish language, which she uses most frequently, then she translates them in English. Readers interested in poetry may find it intriguing to see how she meets the challenge of poetic expressions in two so different languages.