This new gathering of Marge Piercy's poems - funny, angry, in awe of life, compassionate - brings us the heart of her mature work, the first selected since Circles on the Water in 1982.
Here, poems chart the milestone events and fierce passions of the poet's middle years, her Judaism, her deep connection with nature, her politics. There is the death of her mother, whom we meet as a young woman, 'awkwardly lovely, her face / pure as a single trill perfectly / prolonged on a violin.' She celebrates her new marriage not only for its romantic beginning, but for its quieter details: 'love cherishes too the back pockets, / the pencil ends of childhood fears.' In every poem we hear the current of her convictions, which she declares in language unmistakably and colorfully her own, as when she encourages her readers to go to the opera instead of the movies because 'the heroine is fifty and weighs as much as a '65 Chevy with fins.' And, in several poems, bearing the loss of people and time, she begins to examine her own legacy:
I have worn the faces, the masks
of hieroglyphs, gods and demons,
bat faced ghosts, sibyls and thieves,
lover, loser, red rose and ragweed,
these are the tracks I have left
on the white crust of time.
- from 'Tracks'
Here, poems chart the milestone events and fierce passions of the poet's middle years, her Judaism, her deep connection with nature, her politics. There is the death of her mother, whom we meet as a young woman, 'awkwardly lovely, her face / pure as a single trill perfectly / prolonged on a violin.' She celebrates her new marriage not only for its romantic beginning, but for its quieter details: 'love cherishes too the back pockets, / the pencil ends of childhood fears.' In every poem we hear the current of her convictions, which she declares in language unmistakably and colorfully her own, as when she encourages her readers to go to the opera instead of the movies because 'the heroine is fifty and weighs as much as a '65 Chevy with fins.' And, in several poems, bearing the loss of people and time, she begins to examine her own legacy:
I have worn the faces, the masks
of hieroglyphs, gods and demons,
bat faced ghosts, sibyls and thieves,
lover, loser, red rose and ragweed,
these are the tracks I have left
on the white crust of time.
- from 'Tracks'
Used availability for Marge Piercy's The Hunger Moon