Ann Manganaro SL: Poet
Posted on June 19, 2023, by Christina Manweller
The out-shining, out-reaching sea-
Excerpt from “March 1981”
Strange mystery of life at last
Bursting forth in us.
Ann Manganaro SL wrote, “I sing of the light behind the sky” (1/1/1981). In her poetry, she sings, laments, shares life’s beauty and struggles. Her bold imagination and keen sense of rhythm and sound captivate the reader (“The foam raced over the shore to slide away / Leaving the sand a slick slatemirror”). Though light is a recurring motif, Ann never fears to reach into the dark corners of the human condition, especially in the later poems written in war-torn El Salvador where she arrived in 1988 to live and work. Her reference in an early poem to “my own determined tenderness” is a thread that runs through her life and poetry. Readers will appreciate Ann’s intelligence, passion and clear sightedness. Her spirituality is deeply lived. In September 1992 she wrote in her journal, “… the writing for me is like a prayer.” In her poetry God is often encountered, addressed or questioned (“I came here gasping for God as if for air. / And came to the right place it seems, for God / Hangs in the very air like incense here”). Reading these poems, you will likely find yourself smiling, weeping, whispering amen. They are as alive now as when they were written.
I came here gasping for God as if for air.
La Palma, 14 September 1992
And came to the right place it seems, for God
Hangs in the very air like incense here,
Lifting up in layers like the mist threaded
Through the hills of a morning, sifting down
Among the insect sounds to settle the night in,
Stirring the day-break’s breezes, or grown
Enormous in the gathering torrential rain,
Falling with the slow precise drops that roll
From leaf to grass in the storm’s aftermath.
Not that any of these are God. No.
But that within the interstices of my soul
Breathes in what tastes like life’s heart and with
And for whom I choose to let God be so.
Please, give me a living love again or let
Anniversary Prayer, 15 September 1992 (Sept. 15 was the 28th anniversary of Ann’s entering the Loretto postulancy in 1964)
Me go. I cannot keep on scraping dead flakes
Of kindness off old bones, a voice that speaks
Its blessings in a death rattle whisper. Get
Me a red heart instead, pounding, pulsing,
Real blood rushing through real flesh to reach
Outstretching warm arms, to enfold: touch
That breathes, sparks that fly, that from fingers spring
To the soul’s center. Let me cry out clear,
Through bright morning air swing sound out ring
A space-filling swell of praise, let me sing
A pure-pitched truth that transmutes despair
Leave all else, but bring me thus: love
Throbbing through me, through me love alive.
Flying low, you float
February 28, 1977
Across a landscape of fallen stars
The city’s jewels, strung, stretched
Flung before you. Those stars
Like fallen angels lie in wait
To betray their own beauty,
Quenched up close in the grim grime
Of the city. In the frozen faces
Which throng each pearl-strewn street.
If you hovered endlessly
Would the city, like its light, rise?
Order the book!
“Give Me a Living Love: The Poems of Ann Manganaro SL” may be purchased here.
Or send a check (memo line: Ann Manganaro) payable to Sisters of Loretto to:
Loretto Books c/o A. Mattingly
515 Nerinx Rd.
Nerinx, KY 40049
$10, includes shipping and handling.
To read all the articles in the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of Loretto Magazine, click here.
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