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My Mother's Body: Poems
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.
"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.
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 12, 1985
9 people are currently reading
222 people want to read
About the author
Marge Piercy
113 books926 followersMarge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 1, 2018
The sky is white and the earth is white
and the white wind is blowing in arabesques
fill me roaring with your necessary music
loose upon me your stories screaming for life
I know of what rags and bones and clippings from frothing newsprint and poisonous glue my structures are built
and the white wind is blowing in arabesques
fill me roaring with your necessary music
loose upon me your stories screaming for life
I know of what rags and bones and clippings from frothing newsprint and poisonous glue my structures are built
November 2, 2022
I love Marge Piercy's poetry. She is an exceptionally gifted poet.
The longings of women:
butterflies beating against
ceilings painted blue like sky;
flies buzzing and thumping their heads
against the pane to get out.
They die and are swept off
in a feather duster.
The hopes of women are pinned
after cyanide by rows
labeled in Latin
the fragile wings fading.
The keeper speaks with melancholy
of how beautiful they were
as if he had not killed them.
The anger of women runs like small
brown ants you step on,
swarming in cracks in the pavement,
marching in long queues
through the foundation and inside,
nameless, for our names
are not yet our own.
But we are many and hungry
and our teeth though small are sharp.
If we move together
there is no wall we cannot erode
dust-grain by speck, and the lion
when he lies down is prey
to the army of ants.
- Marge Piercy
The longings of women:
butterflies beating against
ceilings painted blue like sky;
flies buzzing and thumping their heads
against the pane to get out.
They die and are swept off
in a feather duster.
The hopes of women are pinned
after cyanide by rows
labeled in Latin
the fragile wings fading.
The keeper speaks with melancholy
of how beautiful they were
as if he had not killed them.
The anger of women runs like small
brown ants you step on,
swarming in cracks in the pavement,
marching in long queues
through the foundation and inside,
nameless, for our names
are not yet our own.
But we are many and hungry
and our teeth though small are sharp.
If we move together
there is no wall we cannot erode
dust-grain by speck, and the lion
when he lies down is prey
to the army of ants.
- Marge Piercy
May 27, 2016
Love the poems in the first section re: her mother, particularly 'Putting the good things away', 'What remains' & 'They inhabit me.' I also just like Piercy - her sharpness and love of cats and sense of humour (see: 'Cold head, cold heart').
June 25, 2024
what the eff.
July 26, 2019
Her poems about her mother are some of the most striking poems I’ve ever read however there was something about the simplicity of her husband, Ira Wood’s poems that really resonated with me. This was an A+ rummage sale fund for me, signed by the author and everything 😍
February 16, 2022
4.5 stars, very good especially the poems about how much she loves cats
November 26, 2024
Gorgeous poetry from an amazing poet. One of my favorites.
March 17, 2025
Solid, haunting entry
April 3, 2025
I really liked the poem "The Wine".
January 1, 2026
the poems tell beautiful stories, but the poetry itself suffers from moments of over-explanation
November 10, 2015
One of the most interesting parts of this collection is the inclusion of two poems by Piercy's husband, Ira Wood, both of which talk about marriage alongside Piercy's own poetry. He has a less angry, more even-handed tone than Piercy, but it still threw me off since in a Marge Piercy poetry collection, I expect to see all poems by Marge Piercy.
The rest of the collection fell kind of flat for me. I didn't hate it, but there wasn't much spectacular going on. Some may disagree with me, but I found it very "meh."
The rest of the collection fell kind of flat for me. I didn't hate it, but there wasn't much spectacular going on. Some may disagree with me, but I found it very "meh."
March 14, 2009
The poems about her mother make my heart raw. She hits every painful mother daughter nerve.
September 15, 2009
Poetry based on her memories of her mother-and her love for her husband. I like her poetry cause it's got a sarcastic sense of humor.
January 22, 2017
Taking its title from one of her strongest and most moving poems, this powerful collection of poetry is well balanced, complex, honest and intimate.
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February 22, 2013811.54 P618m 1985
February 24, 2015
I started this ages ago and sadly find poetry really hard to persevere with despite loving it, but this was really lovely. my favourite was the last poem
December 31, 2015
A reminder that poetry is an "underrated pleasure."
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews