Declassified is an enigmatic, at times erotic, often passionate exploration of relationships and politics, finding their shared tropes of deception, subterfuge, and even espionage. The poems move between a Chilean revolutionary and a 'Her' based in the American Midwest of today. Ultimately, the book's focus is on love - between husbands and wives, friends, and a mother and her daughter - and how, in challenging times, only the strongest bonds resist decay.

The two threads of this book are militancy (civic, political, social) and love (the beloved, the people). There are threads that alternate with each other, but the more intriguing moments are intertwined and this fabric of love and activism is the greatest merit of the book. One of their highest poetic achievements are in describing the ruins present and the future of all humankind - from the Parthenon to the Eiffel Tower, by contrast postulates: "Yet we have erected monuments / Evergreen: / two gazes that cross, for example, / my love for you, for example, that precedes me / thousands of thousands of years / and I will survive until the last of the / men contemplating / the last of the sunset." It is not purely a militant poem, but a love poem, or the ultimate poem.

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. FRENCH LANGUAGE. Translated into French by Guy Jean. MA DEMEURE BRULE est oeuvre de memoire. Retour sur les horreurs commises par la dictature militaire au Chili et sur une jeune existence qui bascule dans l'exil. D'ou le titre de la traduction: MA DEMEURE BRULE. Ces poemes sont memoire d'un amour vivant qui hante l'auteure apres l'assassinat de l'amant. Mais aussi, souvenirs de famille, des odeurs, des couleurs, des chants du pays.Longue et difficile marche de la memoire pour s'inscrire hors de la nostalgie, hors de l'exil, dans le present et l'espoir de l'amour.

Poetry. Latino/Latino Studies. "The word 'cosmopolitan' has unfortunately come to connote a kind of haughty (perhaps affected) sophistication, so some other adjective is needed to convey the unusual combination of worldliness and immediacy that pulses in Ms. Griffor's poems. While she is capable of acknowledging and dramatizing ghastly geopolitical realities with stark veracity, she always--yes, always--approaches the momentous historical complexities she is uniquely situated to describe with a tenderness most people (including most poets) can only summon for their home life. Indeed, Mariela Griffor is entirely at home in the world at large, and in her poems she chronicles an unbroken continuum from her closest familial and companionable relationships to the hazards of true citizenship in our gigantic globalized society. I would say that Mariela Griffor has a sacramental sense of artistic vocation. She is dedicated, intellectually penetrating, and endlessly curious"--Jim Schley.