Research Catalog

Title

What are big girls made of? : poems / by Marge Piercy.

Author

Piercy, Marge.

Publication

New York : Alfred Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 159 pages; 22 cm

Summary

• What Are Big Girls Made Of? is full of poems - funny, serious, angry, delightful - that illumine the experience of being a woman. The title poem is a lament for women who allow themselves to be caught in the painful dilemma of being "retooled, refitted and redesigned" to match the style of every decade.
• Others extol the salty pleasures of middle age: making love with a familiar and adored partner; the ease with which one comes to accept one's body - a good belly, for example, is "a maternal cushion radiating comfort," handed down from mother to daughter like a prize feather quilt.
• Some of the book's most beautiful poems are about the precarious balance of nature: white butterflies mating "in Labor Day morning steam" (a poem for Rosh Hashana); a little green snake slithering back to the camouflage safety of grass; the cool song of an October lunar eclipse, as opposed to the dangerous implications of the sun's disappearance; the death of an exquisite doe.
• Appropriately, from a poet who so winningly celebrates life in all its many variations, the book ends with the moving and simple "The Art of Blessing the Day": "Bless whatever you can/with eyes and hands and tongue. If you/can't bless it, get ready to make it new."

Subject

• Women > Poetry

Contents

• Brother-less one: Sun god -- Brother-less two: Palimpsest -- Brother-less three: Never good enough -- Brother-less four: Liars' dance -- Brother-less five: Truth as a cloud of moths -- Brother-less six: Unconversation -- Brother-less seven: Endless end -- What are big girls made of? -- Pop-sicle -- Elegy in rock, for Audre Lorde -- A day in the life -- The promotion -- A little monument -- Half vulture, half eagle -- The grey flannel sexual harassment suit -- All systems are up -- Between two Hamlets -- All day all night talk radio -- The thief -- The new Rock Island Line -- For two women shot to death in Brookline, Massachusetts -- Moonburn -- Liars' dice -- A warm place becomes a cold place -- All lovers have secret names -- Little acts of love -- The negative ion dance -- Dance of the trees -- Your standard mid life crisis -- Duet that trails off -- Salt in the afternoon -- Belly good -- The puzzle -- The retreat -- Reshaping each other -- On guard --
• Ancient wood -- Blizzard in March -- March comes in on cleft hooves -- The visitation -- The voice of the grackle -- Thousands of morning moths -- In June, the young deer are almost tame -- Death of a doe on Chequesset Neck -- The sky changes -- A quick and quiet one -- Crow babies -- The level -- October eclipse -- Off season rental -- Trying our metal -- Transfixed on the bank -- Syzygy -- My boa -- If we can't find it, we make it -- The world from below -- Growing up haunted -- The flying Jew -- My rich uncle, whom I only met three times -- On the road in middle age -- Diana inaccessible -- Reflections on a mirror -- The descent of Orphee -- The mean -- Kaddish -- Season of breakage -- After the wind abated, he walked out and died -- Season of the egg -- Matzoh -- A twitch in time -- Targets -- The price begins to mount -- The world unbandaged -- Coming up on September -- Breadcrumbs -- The art of blessing the day.

ISBN

• 0679450653 (cloth)
• 0679765948 (paper)

LCCN

96029207

OCLC

ocm35103055

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries