- Hardcover: 155 pages
- Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (31 Oct 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0307265072
- ISBN-13: 978-0307265074
- Product Dimensions: 14.9 x 1.9 x 21.9 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,950,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In these powerful, often funny, sometimes lyrical, and down-to-earth poems, Marge Piercy writes of her “crooked inheritance”—physical and personality traits from wildly mismatched parents, and in a larger sense the marvelous half-broken world we inherit. Even her hometown Detroit provides a double legacy—a slum girlhood that breeds in her both wild ambition and, where you would least expect it, a love of nature, which she discovers in the city’s elms, “the thing of beauty on grimy smoke-bleared streets.”
Some of Piercy’s strongest poems have always been political, and here are important new verses raging against the war in Iraq, the abandonment of Katrina’s victims (“People penned to die in our instant / concentration camps, just add water”), and the ongoing attempts to suppress women—their rights, their bodies, their minds, their very being: “The CIA should hire as spies / only women over fifty, because we are the truly invisible.”
Other poems are about her life on Cape Cod, where she finds sanctuary in the long natural rhythms of the year’s cycle—gardening, making pesto, hearing coyotes in the winter “yelping in chorus after a kill,” a place where after weeks of rain and snow, the “sun gives birth to rosebushes,” and “everything revealed is magical, splendid in its ordinary shining.” Here, too, are wonderful love songs, about friends, lovers, a beautiful day, animals, making bread.
Deep connections to Jewish life and ritual reveal themselves in poems about her Lithuanian grandmother, about holidays, about the peace in a time of war that ceremony can bring, “an evening of honey on the tongue . . . a puddle of amber light . . . faces of friends . . . darkness walling off the room from what lies outside.”
These marvelous poems remind us anew of the breadth and strength of Marge Piercy’s poetic vision. A superb collection to read and treasure.
Some of Piercy’s strongest poems have always been political, and here are important new verses raging against the war in Iraq, the abandonment of Katrina’s victims (“People penned to die in our instant / concentration camps, just add water”), and the ongoing attempts to suppress women—their rights, their bodies, their minds, their very being: “The CIA should hire as spies / only women over fifty, because we are the truly invisible.”
Other poems are about her life on Cape Cod, where she finds sanctuary in the long natural rhythms of the year’s cycle—gardening, making pesto, hearing coyotes in the winter “yelping in chorus after a kill,” a place where after weeks of rain and snow, the “sun gives birth to rosebushes,” and “everything revealed is magical, splendid in its ordinary shining.” Here, too, are wonderful love songs, about friends, lovers, a beautiful day, animals, making bread.
Deep connections to Jewish life and ritual reveal themselves in poems about her Lithuanian grandmother, about holidays, about the peace in a time of war that ceremony can bring, “an evening of honey on the tongue . . . a puddle of amber light . . . faces of friends . . . darkness walling off the room from what lies outside.”
These marvelous poems remind us anew of the breadth and strength of Marge Piercy’s poetic vision. A superb collection to read and treasure.
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1 review
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Speaking her mind
12 Nov 2006
Format:Hardcover
I was fortunate to hear Marge Piercy read her poetry at The Wisconsin Book
Festival and I was blown away. What a joy to discover a new author to read
and recommend.
In "Tracks", Piercy portrays the multitude of roles we fill, not only
with our relatives and friends, but also to the animals we interact with in
our life journey.
In "Hollywood Haircut" she wonders if a $400 haircut would change her life
for the better but decides
"No,I thought so.
I'll stick to Sarah
and my $35 trim."
In "Mighty Big" Piercy considers the ramifications of our arrogant foreign
policy.
I am going to quote from "Swear It" regarding those who seem to be holier
than thou.
"It has always amazed me there are
words too potent to say to those
whose ears are tender as baby
lettaces-often those who label
us into narrow jars with salt and
vinegar,saying, People like THEM,
meaning me and mine. Never say
the K or N word, just quietly shut
and bolt the door. Just politely
insert their foot in the Other's face."
Festival and I was blown away. What a joy to discover a new author to read
and recommend.
In "Tracks", Piercy portrays the multitude of roles we fill, not only
with our relatives and friends, but also to the animals we interact with in
our life journey.
In "Hollywood Haircut" she wonders if a $400 haircut would change her life
for the better but decides
"No,I thought so.
I'll stick to Sarah
and my $35 trim."
In "Mighty Big" Piercy considers the ramifications of our arrogant foreign
policy.
I am going to quote from "Swear It" regarding those who seem to be holier
than thou.
"It has always amazed me there are
words too potent to say to those
whose ears are tender as baby
lettaces-often those who label
us into narrow jars with salt and
vinegar,saying, People like THEM,
meaning me and mine. Never say
the K or N word, just quietly shut
and bolt the door. Just politely
insert their foot in the Other's face."
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