Laino, E. J. Miller 1948-

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LAINO, E. J. Miller 1948-

PERSONAL: Married; children: two daughters. Education: University of Massacusetts and Fitchburg State College.

CAREER: Poet. Has worked with youths as a substance abuse prevention specialist.

AWARDS, HONORS: American Book Award, for Girl Hurt, 1996.

WRITINGS:

Girl Hurt: Poems, Alice James (Farmington, ME), 1995.

(Editor with Robert Cording and Shelli Jankowski-Smith) In My Life: Encounters With the Beatles, Fromm (New York City), 1998.

Contributor to American Poetry Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Poet E. J. Miller Laino's Girl Hurt: Poems was called a "stunning debut collection" by a Publishers Weekly reviewer who felt Laino "is no one-theme, one-book poet." Laino wrote the title poem after reading a newspaper account of a young immigrant girl who tried to stop her father from committing suicide. "Hers is a defiant use of words, heartbreak that spins inside a vortex of anger," wrote Charlotte Mandel in American Book Review. Mandel said that throughout the poetry, "pain, sex, birth, and death inescapably intertwine." Laino's poems are autobiographical. Mandel wrote that "death ... does not equate with limbo or disappearance. Death is physical and violent, like the smashed flat body of a pet turtle that symbolizes the violent discord of her parents' marriage."

Laino reveals how she gave up her Down's syndrome baby, Rachel, in "Telling the Truth," because she "couldn't bear one more/wrong thing....Allmy life I wanted to obey the rules/but they kept breaking. Like Huck Finn/on the raft, I knew I was going to hell./So I committed one more sin." In another poem she envisions her aborted fetus as a "tadpole baby/swimming in a make believe space of sky." In "The Catholic Church Abolishes Limbo," she wrote, "Even after the church abolished Limbo,/I couldn't./It gave me strange comfort/when I let a machine/suck a nine-week fetus/out of my body." Several poems address psychotherapy, including "Two Sisters, Three Therapy Sessions."

In the third and final section of Girl Hurt, Laino's shorter, lyrical poems speak of love and motherhood. In the final entry, "Lunar Eclipse," the author and her daughter, Jaime, contemplate their own lives while they watch the moon disappear, then reappear, as it moves across the sky. Cortney Davis, writing in Prairie Schooner, said: "Laino's poetic vision allows us to look through that 'high powered telescope,' examining the minutiae of reality with all its terrors and seeing, ultimately, our human beauty as we cling 'like angels' to our lives." Davis called Laino's poetry "sometimes tough, sometimes fragile and lyrical," observing that she is always in control "of a language that drives relentlessly toward transcendence."

Poet Martin Espada described Laino as 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 of pain and fear, however. These poems celebrate survival, the durability of family, the liberation of unheard voices, especially female and working-class voices."

Laino coedited In My Life: Encounters with the Beatles. She and her co-editors were inspired to collaborate on the anthology when they discovered that Beatles music was incredibly poetic. They felt that the Beatles deserved to have a serious literary work that discussed their musical body of poetry. They solicited contributions from writers across the country and spent nearly three years preparing the book, coeditor Shelli Jankowski-Smith told the South Bend Tribune in an interview.

Included are fifty-six essays, memoirs, poems, and fiction by writers reflecting on the Fab Four. Timothy Leary's essay "Thank God for the Beatles" reveals Leary's experiences with the group while on LSD. A Publishers Weekly reviewer said this essay alone "justifies the price of admission." Composer Leonard Bernstein shares his sense of being overwhelmed when he first saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Other contributors include Allen Ginsburg, early Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe, poets Donald Hall and David Wojan, and music critic Greil Marcus. Many of the writers are less well known, and not all are complimentary. Gordon Flagg wrote in Booklist that the book is "an ardent yet thoughtful reminder of what it was like to be young during the heady days of Beatlemania."

In addition to writing, Laino has taught at the Key West Literary Seminar where she works to inspire new poets.