If I could plant a tree for all that's been lost, I'd create a new forest"
Harvard graduate, New York City news anchor, animal rights activist, and now poet, Francesca Marguerite Maximé, born to an Italian-American mother and Haitian-Dominican father, breaks the barrier of the public persona and boldly bears her spirit in this collection of poems about love, loss, and finding her place.
A book of revelations, Rooted: A Verse Memoir, releasing October 15, from NYQ Books, follows a woman out from the humiliation of a failed seven year engagement, ended just two days before the 300 guest wedding, into the search for bits of herself until she is whole again.
Touching on themes of parental disdain, body image, online bullying, and familial legacy, Maximé delivers an undiluted declaration of distress and restoration. The divulgence itself is therapeutic.
"Seemed Like Sex," the first poem, journeys back to her first experiences with a man. Her father. Painting a portrait of duality, he is the man who makes her feel both beautiful and afraid. He is the man who dances with her, waltzing along that fine line between attention and attraction. He is the mold, the matrix for all men to follow.
Next, we meet her fiancé whom she lived with for seven years and promised to be her partner forever. In "Wedding Date," she introduces a man with no belief in forever, tormented by the suicide of his own mother; a man haunted by having been the one to find her lifeless body when he was only a child.
Brandon, her fiancé, was shaped by the first woman he ever loved, the woman who hurt more than she could live. His promise was symbolized by the ring of his resting mother, the woman who abandoned him.
With the proposal their wedding became a funeral, the poet forced to live up to a dead mother whom she could never replace.
In her quest to quell the agony of calamity, Maximé visits memories, her cultural inheritance in the form of food, nature, geography, and relatives.
"Buying You," a piece devoted to her grandfather, is the proof that not all is imperfect. A hero, a force of love, so strong in the way she remembers him and in the way he showed care, he is the man she turns to for guidance, for light out of the labyrinth of loss. In this poem she misses him, needs him.
But it is also in this piece that we are introduced to her disenchantment with her mother. Maximé searches for reassurances and goes to the grave to find them, to the earth, rather to a mother she feels could have done more.
Identity is the central theme -- a woman looking for the life she built then lost, reaching for the wisdom of a mother whose strength she could not see, a name that does not represent her. With "Name Change," again we ask, what's in a name? Tragedy, romance, innocence, fate.
Stricken by abandonment, neglect, and belittlement, the bride-to-be is left to wonder and to wander. She moves to Florida only to abandon herself and family, to leave Christmas, and heirlooms, and friends.
These poems saved her. Reading them is like opening her journal, archiving along with her the bereavement, the memories made of color, birds, the temperature of a breeze, and how alive the agony can be just driving through a familiar forest.
Written in crisp, expertly placed prose with impelling imagery and action, Maximé uses Rooted, not to glimpse into the window of her soul, but to offer a guided tour that begins with a welcome mat.
Longing to become a mother herself, with her we learn that sometimes the desire to become a parent is really a desire to do the impossible -- to be better than our parents, to give what our parents didn't or couldn't give. But we cannot fore-measure how deeply our own imperfections might cut, how widely they might bruise. That is the mystery and glory of a tree, especially a family tree.
There are many pieces devoted to the poet's wish that her mother could have made her whole as a child and that she could have stepped into adulthood full and unbroken, but as she does, we discover that being complete rests with us.
In "Eulogy for My Mother," Maximé concedes to misunderstanding, showing gratitude to a mother that is still with us, but one day will not be. The poet realizes a parent's precarious position in the community and in the home as they live multiple lives and play multiple roles. We all do the best we can.
Five years after the break up of her engagement, we revisit Brandon. He has moved on, yet still living in the house they shared, with a new woman, living his life still stuck in the moment he found his mother. In pieces such as "Bad Seed" and "This Morning," Maximé realizes that she could not have saved him and that in many ways Brandon paid for the mistakes of her father, as she tried and couldn't do for his mother.
We are allowed to witness her struggles in the public eye, her secret sorrows exposed through weight gain, hair extensions, and too heavy make-up. We are allowed to see her.
Wounds will be inflicted by others and ourselves. These poems are in observance of both. Wounds and healing. Sadness and joy. With them Maximé marks the madness of love, but still finds time to smile, to laugh, and to bake the best oatmeal cookies.
Moving forward is key. With courage and constant refinement, the roots will bear future fruit, a legacy, a descendant.
This is a collection for anyone who was a child, whose parents failed them in tiny or grand ways, whose pain informed their futures and hindered them in some part. This is for anyone who is searching for peace and forgiveness, or has found it. This book is for us all.
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