Product Description
My Mother's Body, Marge Piercy's tenth book of poetry, takes its title from one of her strongest and most moving poems, the climax of a powerful sequence of Poems to her mother. Rooted in an honest, harrowing, but ally ecstatic confrontation of the mother / daughter relationship in all its complexity and intimacy, it is at the same time an affirmation of continuity and identification.

"The Chuppah" comprises poems actually used in her wedding ceremony with Ira Wood. This section sings with powerfully female love poetry. There is also a sustained and direct use of her Jewish identity and faith in these poems, as there is in a number of other poems throughout the volume.

Readers of Piercy's previous collections will not be surprised to encounter her mixture of the personal and the political, her love of animals and the Cape landscape. There are poems about doing housework, about accidents, about dreaming, about bag ladies, about luggage, about children's fears of nuclear holocaust; about tomcats, insects in the rafters, the influence of a name, appleblossoms and blackberries, pollution, and some of the ways women objectify one another. In "Does the light fail us, or do we fail the light?" Piercy writes with lacerating honesty about our relationships with the elderly and about hers with her father.

Some of the most moving poems are domestic, as in the final sequence, "Six underrated pleasures," which finds in daily women's tasks both pleasure and mystery, affirmation of serf and connection with the mother.

In all, My Mother's Body is one of Piercy's most powerful and balanced collections. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Extraordinarily Beautiful Love Poetry
Marge Piercy gives us a rare treat--sharing the poems that she and her husband wrote for their wedding.Poems in "The Chuppah" are among the most beautiful love poems that I ever have encountered.Piercy has made me rethink what marriage means, and how to celebrate all aspects of married life.

Her poems about her relationship with her parents are hard to read without weeping.All the mixed feelings that come with challenging parent-adult child relationships shimmer in these poems.

Her series of poems about underrated pleasures--sleeping with cats, folding sheets, etc.--make me remember to stop and enjoy the little things in life.

Marge Piercy is one of the greatest poets of our time!This collection is not to be missed.

Great Insight!
Marge Piercy's poetry is magnificent and at the same time very realistic! Some would say it's too feminist, but if you ask me it's very true and refreshing. The poems are feeled with energy and rage :o) BUY IT, IT'SREALLY GOOD!!!!!!!!! ... Read more

Product Description
In Colors Passing Through Us, Marge Piercy is at the height of her powers, writing about what matters to her most: the lives of women, nature, Jewish ritual, love between men and women, and politics, sexual and otherwise. Feisty and funny as always, she turns a sharp eye on the world around her, bidding an ex-hausted farewell to the twentieth century and singing an "electronic breakdown blues" for the twenty-first.

She memorializes movingly those who, like los desaparecidos and the victims of 9/11, disappear suddenly and without a trace. She writes an elegy for her mother, a woman who struggled with a deadening round of housework, washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, and so on, "until stroke broke / her open." She remembers the scraps of lace, the touch of velvet, that were part of her maternal inheritance and first aroused her sensual curiosity. Here are paeans to the pleasures of the natural world (rosy ripe tomatoes, a mating dance of hawks) as the poet confronts her own mortality in the cycle of seasons and the eternity of the cosmos: "I am hurrying, I am running hard / toward I don't know what, / but I mean to arrive before dark."

Other poems-about her grandmother's passage from Russia to the New World, or the interrupting of a Passover seder to watch a comet pass-expand on Piercy's appreciation of Jewish life that won her so much acclaim in The Art of Blessing the Day. Colors Passing Through Us is a moving celebration of the endurance of love and of the phenomenon of life itself-a book to treasure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A wonderfully diverse collection, review by 17-year old
Marge Piercy's poetry is a joy to read, and this volume is no exception. Featuring her usual wealth of subjects-- family, feminism (my favorites are "One reason I like opera" and "In the department store"), cats, religion-- the collection is easy to read in a single sitting.

Piercy's tone varies as much. She is alternately solemn, earnest, witty ("Kamasutra for dummies") but never forced or condescending toward her audience. She writes nature poems ("Winter promises," "Taconic at midnight") in a refreshingly modern style, uniquely juxtaposing natural and man-made.

Marge Piercy introduced me to feminism at a young age, and remains someone I truly look up to. ... Read more

Product Description
Successful Boston cookbook author Daria Walker, whose greatest pleasures are her home and family -- and who loves her husband deeply -- is devastated to learn he wants a divorce. Now she must put her life back together. But as she strives to understand the life she is losing, Daria must face the shocking truth behind the smooth facade of her prominent attorney-husband, Ross -- and recreate her own values, her own sense of family, and herself.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Woman coming of age after marriage
The primary character, Daria, has been married for 20+ years and slowly comes to realize how unaware she has been of who she is and begins to question her view of her reality as that reality breaks apart.

A great book for currently divorcing or recently divorced women.Hard to put down, and wonderful characters throughout.I especially enjoyed Piercy's characterization of Daria's new beau and the relationship and intimacy they develop together, consciously avoiding the mistakes they made in their first marriages.

Amazingly accurate
I read this book as a selection for the book club I belong to.I found it to be a very accurate story about a divorce where deception is involved. It is also accurate about the wife's difficulty in seeing her husband as he is rather than as she believed him to be.As a divorced woman I could relate to many aspects of the story. So much so that the beginning was very hard to read.Even though the real estate story line seems far fetched, it is entirely believable to me.Truth is stranger than fiction.

I liked many of the characters in the story. I have recently started reading another of Marge Piercy's books. Unfortunately, it is not as readable as this book was.

Been there, done that
This book was probably better than I give it credit for, but I've just read too many books lately about good-for-nothing men leaving their wives- wives who are (incredibly) still in love with the scumbags, but who then in the end finally become their own person and realize they are better off without those losers (duh!)-although to give credit where credit is due, this book was written before most of the others.Remember in Open House, where the first guy to show up after the split then turns out to be the next boyfriend?Ditto here.And Daria's sleazy husband Ross is even in the same line of work as Tara Road's Ria's just as sleazy husband Danny:real estate.This story of women's husbands turning out to be jerks and the women they leave reconstructing their lives was just too familiar to be very enjoyable.

My Favorite Piercy Book
This is Ms. Piercy's best book--I've read it more than once, and wish she would write a sequel to it. Daria Walker is a character I relate to--a woman who learns to live on her own, and has a better life because of it.

One woman's journey to find herself
As a man, my review of this book may be somewhat biased, but on the whole, I have to say that this is the best book I've read in a long time about any individual's personal quest to discover who he or she is. Daria Walker is a cookbook writer who enjoys some small fame in the Boston area, and (this is important to the story) who also comes from a working-class background.Her husband, Ross, can be best described as the scum of the earth - he married Daria simply because he saw her as an ornament to his life and career, but now he's met a plain-looking woman who happens to be incredibly rich, and he's also involved himself with several shady (to put it mildly) business deals, one of which involves burning out the tenants of buildings he owns in Daria's old neighborhood.But he doesn't actually own them; Daria does, and....well, this gets very complicated. The point here is that Daria gradually discovers all this, and it shatters her.She has to rebuild her life from the ground up, and finds unlikely allies in the tenants of these buildings.Ms. Piercy makes you believe that Daria is a real person, that this isn't just a piece of fiction.Daria, and all the characters in this book, come to incredibly vivid life.The greatest compliment I can pay to this novel is that I wish Ms. Piercy would write another one with these characters - which, considering that this book is over ten years old, she may well have done.I'd very much like to know what else happens to Daria, Tom, and all the other people in this world Marge Piercy has created.The rating of 9 is only because I detected a stiffness at times in the language of her characters - but that's a very minor detraction in an otherwise excellent book ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An important historical document, a good but flawed vision
Marge's first novel. This is an important historical document. It is really in novel form, with the grace, strength, vigor and torque of Marge Piercy's particular view, this is a distillation of what the SDS RYM faction thought a revolutionary change in America would be like, written close to the moment. It has excitment, vigor of both a moral and a page turning type, and it reads like science fantasy today even though at the time it was conceived thousands of people probably thought it was political realism.
While at the time I would have said what I say now, that real change wont happen until the great batallions of working and farming people in this country move into action, the dream, the justice sought, and the excitement here is 100 times more important than what turned out to be fanciful.If in those days people had these fanciful dreams, with wars, near depression conditions, rising crises in health, homelessness, and the collapse even of bourgeois educationa nd social servidces for working people only beginning, the young Marge Piercy's cherished ream of a better world and faith somehow it could be fought for and won are worth a 1000 cynical, self-centered, neurotic tales that ignore the immorality and crime of this system and the need to tear it down. ... Read more

Product Description
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” ... Read more

Product Description
"FAST-PACED . . . PIERCY BREATHES LIFE INTO THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES WHO SHAPED THE REVOLUTION."
--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

In her most splendid, thought-provoking novel yet, Marge Piercy brings to vibrant life three women who play prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French Revolution--as well as their more famous male counterparts.

Defiantly independent Claire Lacombe tests her theory: if men can make things happen, perhaps women can too. . . . Manon Philipon finds she has a talent for politics--albeit as the ghostwriter of her husband's speeches. . . . And Pauline Léon knows one thing for certain: the women must apply the pressure or their male colleagues will let them starve. While illuminating the lives of Robespierre, Danton, and Condorcet, Piercy also opens to us the minds and hearts of women who change their world, live their ideals--and are prepared to die for them.

"MASTERFUL . . . PIERCY BRINGS THE BLOOD AND GUTS, THE IDEAS AND PASSIONS, OF THE REVOLUTION TO LIFE."
--The Women's Review of Books

"PIERCY'S STORYTELLING POWERS CAPTURE THE TURBULENCE AND EXCITEMENT OF [THIS] LIBERATING ERA."
--The Boston Herald ... Read more

Customer Reviews (27)

French Revolution comes alive
A very incise recreation of the French Revolution.The life on Danton, Robespierre and the others jump off the page.I thought that Ms. Piercy captured the feel of the epoch and the times and filled in what the Revolutionaries might have said.I felt like I was a part of the action and had a whole new insight into the time.
If you've ever wondered what being alive during the Terror and the birth of the new republic, the insanity and passion then this is the book for you.

Not My Taste.
I honestly do not recommend this book, unless you have socialist sympathies and enjoy reading about low lifes behaving badly. I suppose the feminist aspect might appeal to female readers, however, in any historical period one can find women working behind the political scene; unfortunately in this novel the women so chosen do not represent anything worth admiration or interest.

Making the French Revolution boring
If I could give a negative star for this book, I would.This is the most boring, tedious historical novel I have ever read - and I have read many.The plot concept of showcasing characters from different social stratas and describing how they were involved/impacted by the Revolution should be interesting.Who would have thought anyone could make the French Revolution boring?For some reason I always finish reading any book I start - until now.I am actually considering sending it to the recycle bin as I don't want anyone else to have to waste their time or funds.

Suspenseful reading
Follows the lives of 6 historical characters through the turbulent time of the French revolution.Read that while travelling through France, so found it very interesting.I like how the story interweaves the points of view of the different characters, jumping from one to another.Found the novel very thought-provoking and very reflective of human nature.

If you want a good novel about the French Revolution.....
...this is not it. You ought to buy a copy of A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel instead of this stinker.

There are so many grammatical and syntactical errors in this book that the prose is just plain painful. And why pick such a serious subject if you are going to treat it so childishly? This is the kind of book that gives historical fiction a bad name.

While based on historical events and real people, Piercy has her own agenda which she liberally indulges. She never misses a chance to mention excretory functions. Piercy never met an odious smell or rubbish heap she didn't like. She mentions sweat as often as a deoderant commercial. What an odd perspective on history!

It is beyond me to mention everything that is wrong with this novel. If you are a sucker for punishment, go ahead and read it and find out for yourself. Thank God I bought this loser second hand and didn't waste much money.

Now I am going to chuck this book onto the compost heap and pick up my copy of Les Miserables (Modern Library)instead. ... Read more

Product Description
Masks is the affecting, sometimes terrifying debut collection of poems by award-winning fiction writer Ruthann Robson. Here we find poems that are frankly sexual and often passionate, but bathed in a clear hard light, even when she is dealing with the violent and the ultimately irrational. Some of these poems zero in on moments or trends in the poet's own life, as a lesbian mother, a child of the city streets and a legal scholar, while others examine the female experience through women as diverse as Frieda Kahlo, Alice B. Toklas, Diane Arbus, Kathe Kollwitz, Mary Cassatt, Willa Cather and Isadora Duncan. ... Read more

Product Description
A novel set in the past, present and future when the world society has fallen apart and a new order is established. But even here, the Golens are needed - figures who protect the Jews persecuted yet again as they were in 17th century Prague and mid-20th century Europe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

loved this book
I read little fiction but when I do find a novel that keeps my interest it is always a bit of a thrill - and this has been one of the best. The mixing of the futuristic, post-apocalypse cyborg world with the old Jewish ghetto and Golem story worked very well.
The characters and relationships and the pace of the narrative kept me involved throughout.
This is science fiction/fantasy of the best kind - plenty to think about and still plenty to relate to. Action and intelligence.
Highly recommended.

Marge Pierce's writing is now more timely than ever!
Marge Piercy thanks a a lot of people in the preface to this book. Clearly there's been much research here. Before we begin reading, we know we will encounter things Jewish and things Cybernbetic! And the novel does, indeed, interweave the Kabbalah's story of the Golem, (alternate chapters, shades of `Kapilan Of Malta'), with the story of the Cyborg/Android, (Shades of `Blade Runner', `Frankenstein',`I Robot', `Player Piano', and `Startrek, The Next Generation'!

But this is no ordinary do-the-housework Cyborg! More akin to Startrek's Data than Shelley's Frankenstein, Yod is just so superior to the ordinary mortal that he's acceptable, though different, (shades of `Guess Who's Coming To Dinner'). Yod is handsome, physically and mentally superior, incredibly strong and brave, yet gentle, sensitive....and ROMANTIC! (Sidney Poitier, eat your heart out...this part was written for REDFORD or NEWMAN!!)

But of course, and this is the crux of the story, Yod, the last of a series of Cyborgs all considered imperfect for one reason or another, (usually a tendency to VIOLENCE),differs from his predecessors in one important facet of his evolution. Though designed and constructed, just as the others, by the cruel Ari, Jewish Cyber-engineer with all the usual male failings, Yod has been handed to WOMEN to be COMPLETED. Thus his `socialization' is accomplished, first, by Mulcah, Jewish Cyberscientist grandmother, and then by Shira, her granddaughter, Cyberscientist also, who has returned to the Kibbutz-style settlement after her marriage has broken down and the giant Cybercorporation which ruled her life has downgraded her work, denied her custody of her son, and transferred her ex-husband and child to another planet.

Now I consider this is quite a SEXIST book..or FEMINIST, if that sounds better. There are no nice men in this book...not one male character we can respect, yet strong, wise women seem to be in plenty! Yod is the superior `male' standard against whom the others are measured, and found wanting...but it is this contradiction of form and function that must ultimately destroy him.Designed by a man to be a weapon which enjoys killing , yet conditioned by women to be gentle, passive and loving.. Yod must, we realise, eventually self-destruct,(an especially timely scenarion given that Australian society is currentlyquestioning whether the emergence of feminism and Equal Opportunuty legislation is directly responsible for what appears to be an alarming rise in the young male suicide rate. )As to the cloning question, Shira has at her disposal the means to accurately recreate Yod. Whether she should, you will be forced to ask yourself; whether she will do soyou must read the book to find out!.

And this book is a jolly good read no matter how you decide! It's well crafted, well constructed, well written- with something for everyone. Cybermaniacs will love the Virtual Reality journeys, the Intelligent Houses, the enhanced people and all the computer activity. Sociologists will enjoy the post-nuclear-world scene (yes, it DID blow up in the MIddle East!),the Jewish theology and mythology with descriptions of computer-enhanced communes, the depiction of social classes strictly regimented under Big Business Corporations, (shades of Player Piano), and some new twists to the science-versus-humanities theme. The feminists among us will be interested in the strong female roles throughout the novel, particularly, perhaps, the tribe of genetically enhanced Amazon-types which inhabits the caves of nuclear devastated Old Palestine. Even those of us who have become a trifle addicted to visual and textual violence will not go unsatisfied...there are some GREAT FIGHT SCENES! And if you enjoy crime and spy stories, the form and degree of Industrial Espionage and Big Business Guerilla tactics which Marge Piercy envisions for the next century will keep you reading long past your bedtime !

So, no criticisms at all?
Well, perhaps, just a tiny one....I'd have found the whole moral question on which the book is based a little easier to evaluate had Yod been just a tad less PERFECT...just as Spencer and Katherine might have seen things rather differently had their daughter brought home an unemployed school dropout with drug-running convictions!
Had Yod been UGLY, with his transistors and ball-bearing hanging out all over, would Shira have been so BESOTTED...would Yod have been more, or less, human in that case?
And is the story about HUMANITY or about LIFE? Is it BLADE Runner all over again...or more akin to `Last Of The Mohicans'?(Is Data more alive than Mr Spock?)

Yes, `Body Of Glass' leaves us asking ourselves lots of `"what-if?" questions and making lots of mental notes. Isn'tthat the test, after all,of a good sci-fi? Robin Knight, ... Read more

Product Description
Offers excellent specific and highly motivating advice on how to create fully-formed, intriguing characters; master the elements of plotting fiction, devise a strategy for telling your life story, write about painful material well, deal with continual rejection, learn about agents and how much writers really earn and much much more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

As if you were going to die...
Marge Piercy and Ira Wood have been around the block plenty of times, stubbornly making their living out of a love of writing. And a tough living it is, too. While bestselling authors can make megabucks, most writers earn their bread the hard way: "$124,000, and it took four years of my life." You do the math.Nevertheless, Wood and Piercy do not discourage the artist; instead they nurture with motherly advice on agents, and bittersweet tales, such as the story of "Kitchen Man", Wood's exemplary novel (excerpted in the appendix) that goes from campus favorite toout-of-print remainder in that too-short life cycle for so many excellent books.

There exercises, some to polish dialog, and my favorite exercise, a sort of checklist to get to know your characters that reads like a questionnaire for a dating service! There are anecdotes about other famous writing coaches, such as the story of a short novel that goes fromcoach Maxine Kumin to Joyce Carol Oates.Kunin advises the author that the work is going to be a short novella. "No, it's a short novel of 180 pages" declares Oates. When the manuscript was finished, Joyce then tells the author "Treat this as if you are going to die. And this is what you will leave behind." Pithy. Meaningful. This is good writing coaching. This is a warm, wonderful book especially for the memoir or fiction writer.

A wonderful starter book
I have written books for years and can normally get myself past writer's block. The one time that it truly had me stumped, I turned to this book.

I am so glad that I did. The excercizes that they provide are wonderful. Although the theme seems to be more toward writing memoirs, the advice holds true for any fictional writer.

This is a great book for getting back on track. I would reccomend it to those who have written before and need a little reminder of where to begin. It may be too advanced for beginners.

Caterina Christakos
Author of How to Write a Children's Book in 30 Days or Less

An immediate buy
I wont own this book until about 5 minutes after I write this Review.However, I have known of Marge Piercy for about 21 years--actually I bought my first book of hers Vida totally ignorant, but desperate and unemployed and really needing a book to escape into and buying Vida on a remaindered book table outside of a community college where I was then turned down for a temporary clerical job, a college I now teach writing at.I didn't know that Marge was someone from home, someone who came out of the same struggles and times that I came out, that over the years, long before I met her, I would keep running into people not just reading her work, but her doing her deeds had done good things for, important people in my life who would reel the clock back until I realized how many rooms and demonstrations I had shared with Marge.
Later, as I became a writer, I would run into writers who became my friends who kept telling me the good things, the quiet things, the unacknowledged things she had done for them, particularly minority writers made to feel out of place at writing colonies, writers organizations, working class originated people feeling out of place in stuffy phony poetry circles.Marge Piercy is a writer,Marge Piercy is a fighter.
This is going to be direct talk, from reality, as well as from the heart, direct talk for a master of poetry, three or four genres of fiction.I just know from knowing Marge and Ira and their work, that this is the kind of book I will probably be teaching in my classes, and living in my writing.
BUY THIS BOOK

Very Helpful
For writers who are serious about getting published, this book is extremely helpful.It covers everything from the emotional side of being a writer, to the nuts and bolts of submitting a manuscript. Primarily geared towards novelists and writers of memoir, it's also helpful to anyone who takes the art and craft of writing seriously and wants to learn from two successful writers who generously and warmly share their secrets with others.

So you want to read about writing
Most of the time, reading books about writing improves one's writing as much as reading *The Joy of Running* improves one's cardivascular system. I have taught fiction to undergrads, and I usually tell them to spend their time at the keyboard rather than reading how-to books, which tend to be either facile or studiously dreamy.

However, *So you want to write* is based on Piercy's and Wood's workshops and exercises, and while no book will substitute for a good workshop, this book is worth your time. The suggested exercises point one's writing in new directions. The analyses of fiction examples within the book elucidate what was done right as well as deliniate what in the passages should be revised. This is an excellent book for writers seeking to explore the craft and broaden their writing. ... Read more

Product Description
For Leslie, the cost of living--and loving--is getting higher and higher.She has become involved in a strange erotic triangle with Honor, a romantic young woman, and Bernie, a homosexual street hustler.Both Leslie and Bernie want Honor, but all Honor wants is fun.Here is a powerful novel of three young dreamers cuaght up in a life-style they can neither accept nor change....

"A fiercely brilliant writer."

MADEMOISELLE ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Bunch Of Miserable Hedonists Puzzle Over Their Unhappiness
The characters in this novel have all the ecoutrements of interesting personalities--groovy hobbies, varied sexuality, and complicated personal lives. Yet, somehow, they remain flat. Maybe it is Piercy's intention toshow how ultimately we are all really alone. These characters don't seem togive a damn about each other which makes their convoluted relationsunengaging. If you're looking for a good book by Piercy, I'd recommend_Gone to Soldiers_ instead. ... Read more

Product Description
For Leslie, the cost of living--and loving--is getting higher and higher.She has become involved in a strange erotic triangle with Honor, a romantic young woman, and Bernie, a homosexual street hustler.Both Leslie and Bernie want Honor, but all Honor wants is fun.Here is a powerful novel of three young dreamers cuaght up in a life-style they can neither accept nor change....

"A fiercely brilliant writer."

MADEMOISELLE ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Bunch Of Miserable Hedonists Puzzle Over Their Unhappiness
The characters in this novel have all the ecoutrements of interesting personalities--groovy hobbies, varied sexuality, and complicated personal lives. Yet, somehow, they remain flat. Maybe it is Piercy's intention toshow how ultimately we are all really alone. These characters don't seem togive a damn about each other which makes their convoluted relationsunengaging. If you're looking for a good book by Piercy, I'd recommend_Gone to Soldiers_ instead. ... Read more

Product Description
Every year, poet and novelist Marge Piercy creates her own Passover seder with a group of family and friends. Babies have been born and grown up, friends have moved or divorced, but the principals continue to gather in her rustic Cape Cod home to participate in a seder that Piercy takes joy in tweaking each spring to make it more meaningful. In this journey through the ritual, Piercy coaxes us toward “a significant contemporary interpretation, rather than an emphasis on what is strictly ‘correct’ or traditional.” She reminisces about her grandmother, who thought herself unworthy to lead a seder because of her limited Hebrew but presided “morally” at the table; she urges adding an orange to the seder plate; she even describes her heroic efforts to make her own gefilte fish (an experiment not to be repeated).

Piercy offers her distinct slant on each element of the feast and provides dozens of her own wonderful recipes, which she delivers in the same warm, commanding voice as is heard in her poems and prose: “When I told Ira that I was going to explain how to cook matzoh brei, he thought I was crazy. Everybody knows how to make matzoh brei, he said. But I am of the opinion that there is no longer anything that everybody knows how to cook.”

It is in that spirit–no question too simple–that Piercy welcomes readers to her kind of seder: a homemade and personal affair, the kind we all wish we could attend. This charming and instructive book of Passover wisdom, brimming with favorite dishes and Marge Piercy’s own moving Passover poems and blessings, invites us to look at an important Jewish ritual in a whole new way. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Just what I needed for Pesach!
Just loved this book!Loved the style of poetry, interspersed with story telling, interspersed with recipes!We incorporated many of her suggestions and poetry into our own family seder this year.

Offbeat pesach musings
As a fan of Marge Piercy's writings, I was curious about this new endeavor. I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was and the memories it evoked for me. Our Passover seders always include new poetry (many of them from her previous poetry books)and readings, and my attitude about Pesach mirrors hers, "whatever works, do it".I was so impressed that I sent a copy to my niece.Her recipes were an added feature and the macaroons came out great.

very personal, very interesting, and useful
Jewish tradition and feminism collide in this book. I found the tension fascinating. There are a lot of personal stories, a lot of recipes done the way I cook ("add a little of this, or, if you don't like it, add a little of that.") There were a few new poems, but the ones I liked best are already in The Art of Blessing the Day. I didn't always agree with her, but she always provided food for thought.At my seder, I found myself citing this book several times. Plus I cooked a tsimmes from one of her recipes, and it was quite good.
This is far from being a haggadah; just commentary on the various sections of the seder and a lot of interesting stories and recipes.

Make Passover even more meaningful this year
I really appreciate this book. It is respectful of tradition but it also helps to infuse the holiday with personal relevance, which is what it's all about anyway. I love the poems, the prayers, the recipes and wonderful stories that add such richness. Pick and choose what's meaningful to you and "pass over" the rest!

Thought-provoking!
A must-read before Pesach for the traditionalist or modern Jew alike. A very easy book to read packed with information and advice. The recipes look great too! ... Read more

Product Description
Hayashi Kyoko's story, Ritual Of Death, centers around her experience as a schoolgirl caught in the Nagasaki bombing. She was saved by the shadow of a school porter who had crossed in front of her at the moment of the flash. Along with stories, there are poems, essays and art, including photographs. In this collection, the editor aimed for a personal kind of expression, and work that not only shows concern for life and living, but does so with the artist's skill. ... Read more

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Product Description
The Broom Closet explores the sacred, psychological, erotic, and sometimes murderous power of housework, using surprising examples from postfeminist novels by Louise Erdrich, Mary Gordon, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, and Amy Tan. By juxtaposing the novels and their authors' lives with general social and historical context, the book outlines the many ways domestic ritual continues to shape women's consciousness-and either foil or reflect women's creativity. ... Read more

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In Marge Piercy's work, the repair of the world involves an affirmation of a healing and nurturing principle, sometimes depicted as matriarchal, but generally not gender-bound. In this book, the first comprehensive, critical survey of all of Piercy's fiction to date (including her newest novel, The Longings of Women), the author places Piercy in American literary history and in American neofeminist thought. She also highlights Piercy's analysis of power patterns in intimate relationships and in society, and constructions of sexuality and gender as they relate to issues of class and ethnicity. Situated within a feminist discursive space, The Repair of the World both builds on and challenges earlier Piercy criticism. ... Read more

Product Description
Marge Piercy is widely acknowledged as a gifted and significant poet, novelist, and essayist. Her poetry has received extensive critical praise, and her feminist novels, particularly Woman on the Edge of Time, have been embraced as research topics by scholars in a broad range of disciplines. This bibliography aims to include annotated entries for all published materials written by or about Marge Piercy, beginning with her first poem published in 1956, through her latest novel, City of Darkness, City of Light, published in 1996, and a new collection of poetry, What are Big Girls Made of?, to be published in 1997. The range of entries includes print as well as electronic sources for works of fiction and poetry, poetry readings, essays, interviews, criticism, theses and dissertations, and reviews. ... Read more

Product Description
Dinah, Willie, and Susan have long outlived the scandal associated with their ten-year-old menage-a-trois. Dinah, an avante-garde compler, treasures her independence. Yet it takes Willie's kindness and Susan's fire to sustain her. Willie is a left-wing sculptor in a right-wing age. And Susan, his wife, is a fabric designer who craves glamour, wealth, and the attentions of the summer people who visit Cape Cod every year. Then one summer, the balance shifts. Passions are tested, honesty forsaken, and the trio must face the changes brought by their beautiful visitors . . .
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Customer Reviews (4)

Nurturing escape
I really enjoyed this book when I read it several years ago, and it comes back to me from time to time. I like her take on what is sustainable and wholesome in life.I enjoyed watching the progress of their characters through the particular journeys we see them take. I loved her Pesach dinner. And the honesty with which she holds her characters. Low-key delight.

A great read
This book by Marge Piercy is one her better outings. I enjoy her work but her feminist agenda sometimes overides her work. Summer People revolves around the friends, family and lovers of three Cape Cod artists. Susan, Willie and Dinah have been involved in menage a trois that is terminated as the book's action begins. This is partly because of Susan's relationship with a rich summer resident Tyrone has veered into an unhealthy obsession that is ultimately her downfall. Ironically it is this change that allows the other characters to move forward with their lives. Peircy is a good writer and the book is full of juicy observations on the characters and and their interactions. Tyrone is a wonderfully drawn, and it is interesting how Susan never sees the true nature of the man,a selfserving and manipulative user under a polished exterior. However Susan's son Jimmy reveals a dark character as well. This is one part of the book that is very perceptive.I have personally seen the children of parents who depend on the largesse of others grow up to have an expectation things can be "bought" using yourself to pay. In all a really good read.

Wishful Thinking on the Cape
This is a novel about Cape Cod, a narrow peninsula that projects into the Atlantic from southeastern Massachusetts. Cape Cod residents depend on a freshwater aquifer that is constantly threatened by pressure from the surrounding saltwater. There is a mysterious quality about this water that makes the locals have sex frequently and in all sorts of combinations, and it is always very good. This unusual phenomenon is irresistibly appealing to a recent graduate who wants to apply the formulas learned in the creative writing seminar at Cape Cod Community College. The exercise has all the depth of an expanded version of a TV guide synopsis of the daytime soaps. One character appears to be developed with some complexity, but her problem is dismissed casually and accurately by another character as the result of menopausal depression.

terrifically entertaining
Remember the old Agatha Christie books that began with a cast of characters/suspects?This book begins the same way -- which is fitting, since with Piercy the odd mix of characters is what propells the action,and the readers' interest.In this novel, seven or eight characters whirlthrough twelve-month's time in a small town on Cape Cod.Domestic bliss ischallenged by the usual obstacles: envy, longing, and the common desires ofthe heart.Rifts arise between lovers and strangers come together.Smallevents set in motion the breakup of families.I didn't find the bookespecially deep or thought-provoking, but it's definitely entertaining --something to read at the beach or on rainy evenings. ... Read more