What Are Big Girls Made Of? Poems

by PIERCY, MARGE

• ISBN13: 9780679765943
• ISBN10: 0679765948
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-03-04
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

Opening with a powerful cycle of elegies for her long-distant, half-brother, this major new collection by one of our bestselling poets then goes on to include both serious and funny poems about women and poems about the precarious balance of nature, ending with the beautiful, life-affirming "The Art of Blessing the Day." 160 pp.

Author Biography

Marge Piercy is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, including The Art of Blessing the Day; Early Grrrl; Mars and Her Children, My Mother’s Body; Available Light; Stone, Paper, Knife; The Moon Is Always Female; and her selected poems, Circles on the Water. Her book of craft essays, Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt, is part of the Poets on Poetry series of the University of Michigan Press, and she edited a poetry anthology, Early Ripening. In 1990 her poetry won the Golden Rose, the oldest poetry award in the country. She has written fourteen novels, including He, She and It (winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award), The Longings of Women and City of Darkness, City of Light. The novel Storm Tide, co-authored with her husband, Ira Wood, was published in June 1998. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into sixteen languages. She and her husband live on Cape Cod.

Table of Contents

Brother-less one: Sun god	p. 3
Brother-less two: Palimpsest	p. 5
Brother-less three: Never good enough	p. 7
Brother-less four: Liars' dance	p. 11
Brother-less five: Truth as a cloud of moths	p. 13
Brother-less six: Unconversation	p. 15
Brother-less seven: Endless end	p. 18
What are big girls made of?	p. 23
Pop-sicle	p. 27
Elegy in rock, for Audre Lorde	p. 29
A day in the life	p. 32
The promotion	p. 36
A little monument	p. 37
Half vulture, half eagle	p. 39
The grey flannel sexual harassment suit	p. 41
All systems are up	p. 43
Between two Hamlets	p. 45
All day all night talk radio	p. 48
The thief	p. 50
The new Rock Island Line	p. 52
For two women shot to death in Brookline, Massachusetts	p. 54
Moonburn	p. 61
Liars' dice	p. 62
A warm place becomes a cold place	p. 63
All lovers have secret names	p. 66
Little acts of love	p. 67
The negative ion dance	p. 68
Dance of the trees	p. 69
Your standard mid life crisis	p. 70
Duet that trails off	p. 72
Salt in the afternoon	p. 74
Belly good	p. 75
The puzzle	p. 77
The retreat	p. 79
Reshaping each other	p. 81
On guard	p. 82
Ancient wood	p. 85
Blizzard in March	p. 86
March comes in on cleft hooves	p. 87
The visitation	p. 88
The voice of the grackle	p. 90
Thousands of morning moths	p. 92
In June, the young deer are almost tame	p. 93
Death of a doe on Chequesset Neck	p. 96
The sky changes	p. 97
A quick and quiet one	p. 99
Crow babies	p. 101
The level	p. 103
October eclipse	p. 104
Off season rental	p. 106
Trying our metal	p. 108
Transfixed on the bank	p. 109
Syzygy	p. 110
My boa	p. 115
If we can't find it, we make it	p. 117
The world from below	p. 118
Growing up haunted	p. 119
The flying Jew	p. 121
My rich uncle, whom I only met three times	p. 124
On the road in middle age	p. 126
Diana inaccessible	p. 128
Reflections on a mirror	p. 129
The descent of Orphee	p. 131
The mean	p. 134
Kaddish	p. 137
Season of breakage	p. 138
After the wind abated, he walked out and died	p. 141
Season of the egg	p. 143
Matzoh	p. 145
A twitch in time	p. 146
Targets	p. 148
The price begins to mount	p. 150
The world unbandaged	p. 152
Coming up on September	p. 153
Breadcrumbs	p. 155
The art of blessing the day	p. 157
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.