In her last conversation with her dying mother, Mary Brancaccio discussed the work women do. Her mother’s final plea was to “create, just create. Nothing else matters.” Much of Brancaccio’s poetry concerns this terrible tension between obligations and art. Her manuscript, Mistress of Buttons and Keys, is both a journey across time and place as well as a spiritual wandering for meaning in a world that puts a dollar sign to everything, and yet values nothing. In drawing attention to small objects and invisible people, Brancaccio’s poetry is a meditation on loss, recovery and reinvention. Mary’s work has appeared in Edison Literary Review, Minerva Rising, Naguatuck River Review, Adanna and other journals and anthologies.
brick city speaks 