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Made in Detroit: Poems
A treasure trove of new poems by one of our most sought-after poems that range from descriptions of the Detroit of her childhood to her current life on Cape Cod, from deep appreciations of the natural world to elegies for lost friends and relationships, from a vision of her Jewish heritage to a hard-hitting take on today’s political ironies.
In her trademark style, combining the sublime with the gritty, Marge Piercy describes the night she was “the sky burned red / over Detroit and sirens sharpened their knives. / The elms made tents of solace over grimy / streets and alley cats purred me to sleep.” She writes in graphic, unflinching language about the poor, banished now by politicians because they are no longer “real people like corporations.” There are elegies for her peer group of poets, gone now, whose work she cherishes but from whom she cannot help but want more. There are laments for the suicide of dolphins and for her beloved cats, as she remembers “exactly how I loved each.” She continues to celebrate Jewish holidays in compellingly original ways and sings praises of her marriage and the small pleasures of daily life.
This is a stunning collection that will please those who already know Marge Piercy’s work and offer a splendid introduction to it for those who don’t.
In her trademark style, combining the sublime with the gritty, Marge Piercy describes the night she was “the sky burned red / over Detroit and sirens sharpened their knives. / The elms made tents of solace over grimy / streets and alley cats purred me to sleep.” She writes in graphic, unflinching language about the poor, banished now by politicians because they are no longer “real people like corporations.” There are elegies for her peer group of poets, gone now, whose work she cherishes but from whom she cannot help but want more. There are laments for the suicide of dolphins and for her beloved cats, as she remembers “exactly how I loved each.” She continues to celebrate Jewish holidays in compellingly original ways and sings praises of her marriage and the small pleasures of daily life.
This is a stunning collection that will please those who already know Marge Piercy’s work and offer a splendid introduction to it for those who don’t.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2015
13 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Marge Piercy
108 books928 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 - 24 of 24 reviews
April 17, 2017
It's pretty easy to see that, as she's gotten older, Marge Piercy has cut all the superfluous elements from both her poetry and her life. The result is a book that's very clean and spare but never sparse or stingy, covering her upbringing in Detroit as well as such topics as activism, love and marriage, aging and death, and her current life in New England. I particularly appreciated her poems about friendships, those that last and those that don't—I feel like that's a topic that's not dealt with enough in contemporary writing, regardless of genre. Overall, a pleasure to read.
April 12, 2016
Lovers of Piercy's poetry might find her characteristically snarky, biting tone a bit too absent in this collection, but in the poems you can find it, it's still the Piercy we know and love. Criticizing Republicans, the persecution of the poor, and the Earth's slow demise due to climate change, she still delivers. And, of course, there are cat poems and poems not about cats with cats in them. So there's that.
April 27, 2021
For National Poetry Month I purchased poetry books that had been on my 'wish list' for some time.
I was interested in reading several poets with Detroit roots and who had written about Detroit.
Although I am not a native Detroiter, my family moved to Metro Detroit in 1963 when I was ten. My father found work with Chrysler in Highland Park where he was an experimental mechanic.
The poems in Made in Detroit by Marge Piercy are very accessible. The early poems recall an impoverished childhood: "rummage sales were our malls," "the furnace had been fed coal," "we survived on what no one else wanted." In another poems, she recalls job hunting, warned by her mother, "just don't put down Jew."
Her title poem, Made in Detroit, is forceful in language.
My first lessons were kisses and a hammer.
I was fed with mother's milk and rat poison.
I learned to walk on a tightrope over a pit
where snake's warnings were my rattles.
Her poem Our neverending entanglement struck home, for I had written a similar poems after the death of my mother in 1990.
We mourn our mothers till
we ourselves are out
of breath. That umbilical cord between us, never
really cut no matter how
hard we tried in adolescence
to sever it.
I was older when I tried to sever the tie to my mother, but always in returning home I felt diminished back into the girl she still saw in me. With her death, I realized I was more tightly bound to her than ever.
I will be continuing to read at these poems.
I was interested in reading several poets with Detroit roots and who had written about Detroit.
Although I am not a native Detroiter, my family moved to Metro Detroit in 1963 when I was ten. My father found work with Chrysler in Highland Park where he was an experimental mechanic.
The poems in Made in Detroit by Marge Piercy are very accessible. The early poems recall an impoverished childhood: "rummage sales were our malls," "the furnace had been fed coal," "we survived on what no one else wanted." In another poems, she recalls job hunting, warned by her mother, "just don't put down Jew."
Her title poem, Made in Detroit, is forceful in language.
My first lessons were kisses and a hammer.
I was fed with mother's milk and rat poison.
I learned to walk on a tightrope over a pit
where snake's warnings were my rattles.
Her poem Our neverending entanglement struck home, for I had written a similar poems after the death of my mother in 1990.
We mourn our mothers till
we ourselves are out
of breath. That umbilical cord between us, never
really cut no matter how
hard we tried in adolescence
to sever it.
I was older when I tried to sever the tie to my mother, but always in returning home I felt diminished back into the girl she still saw in me. With her death, I realized I was more tightly bound to her than ever.
I will be continuing to read at these poems.
May 11, 2016
Made in Detroit, the book of Marge Piercy poetry, covers an enormous swath of emotional and physical territory. She uses the simplest language to express the deepest thoughts and makes it “poetic,” without superfluous lily-gilding. I was first drawn to her work by her poem “In Praise of Joe.” As a dedicated caffeine consumer, we recognized each other across the page. Here are the two lines that snared me forever: “It is you who make me human every dawn. All my books are written with your ink.” And here’s a bit from the title poem:
The night I was born the sky burned red
over Detroit and sirens sharpened their knives.
The elms made tents of solace over grimy
streets and alley cats purred me to sleep.
The night I was born the sky burned red
over Detroit and sirens sharpened their knives.
The elms made tents of solace over grimy
streets and alley cats purred me to sleep.
August 9, 2015
Another insightful, moving, engaging book of poetry by Marge Piercy. Her poems are a gift to read. Even the titles are unusual and catch your eye. The poems I noted were -
Ignorance bigger than the moon
The poor are no longer with us
Insomniac prayer at 2 a.m.
The visible and the in-
Ignorance bigger than the moon
The poor are no longer with us
Insomniac prayer at 2 a.m.
The visible and the in-
May 17, 2015
She still speaks to me!
Read
June 5, 2015Review by Philip K. Jason for the Jewish Book Council.
August 12, 2015
Another excellent collection of poems by one of my favorite poets.
January 28, 2016
The perfect book to read while mourning the death of a beloved cat.
July 8, 2019
Marge Piercy doesn't pull her punches. She says what she feels and her poetry has a brutal honesty that doesn't shy away from calling people out on their stupidity. But I also found that she has a love of nature and the natural world, she thoughtfully looks back at relationships and painful moments and expresses herself with finely crafted poems that I really liked. Similar to my recent reading of one of Ursula LeGuin's books of poetry, I had only ever read Piercy's fiction and was unaware until recently that she even wrote poetry.
I learned about this book from reading a poem by Piercy called The rented lakes of my childhood which Ken Craft discussed on his blog. I think I liked it so much because, like Marge Piercy, I remember going with my family to various Michigan lakes and visiting family or friends in the inevitable, falling-down cottage that was their summer rental. This poem moved me to find the book which I was able to sleuth with my good friend, google.
Made in Detroit is divided into 6 chapters with poems in broad topic areas ranging from growing up in Detroit, nature, politics of the moment, Judaism, and possibly autobiographical poems about the past and past relationships. It was hard for me to be selective about what to quote here as I enjoyed so many of her poems. This is a book of poetry I would certainly like to own and it has spurred me to look out for more of Piercy's books.
One of my favorites is Little Diurnal Tragedies. Over the last 5 to 6 years my wife and I have spent a lot of time on the road taking our kids back and forth to various areas of the state of Michigan for college. Right now, we are just going back and forth to East Lansing but every time I am struck by the number of animals lying dead by the side of the road....it just bothers me more and more, especially knowing what is happening with the crashing populations of large and small animals throughout the world. Marge Piercy's poem expresses this tragedy well....
Little Diurnal Tragedies
Mercy for the dog lying broken
backed in the road while the car
that hit it speeds off.
Mercy for the wren baby pushed
from the nest by the bigger hatchling--
egg the cowbird deposited.
Mercy for the green turtles caught
in the sudden cold of the bay
when the nor'easter blows.
Mercy for the pregnant cat thrown
out to starve, nursing her five kittens
among garbage and broken glass.
Mercy for the geese the golfers
want poisoned because they disturb
the green beside already polluted pools.
Mercy for the birds trying to fly
south on ancient routes, blinded
by our lights, dying on skyscrapers.
All around us are creatures we barely
notice, trying to preserve their only
lives among our machinery,
among our smog and smoke, inside
our radiation, among the houses and
roads built on their once habitats.
This poem perfectly expresses what many are thinking right now in this US that is slowly turning fiction into fact...think Margaret Atwood.
Ethics for Republicans
An embryo is precious;
a woman is a vessel.
A fertilized egg is a person;
a woman is indentured to it.
An embryo is sacred until birth.
After that, he/she is on their own.
Abortion is murder. Rape,
incest are means to an end:
that precious fertilized egg
housed in an expendable body.
Let us make babies and babies
and babies; children are something
else, probably future criminals,
probably welfare cheats whose
education hikes taxes. You
can freely dispose of them.
I learned about this book from reading a poem by Piercy called The rented lakes of my childhood which Ken Craft discussed on his blog. I think I liked it so much because, like Marge Piercy, I remember going with my family to various Michigan lakes and visiting family or friends in the inevitable, falling-down cottage that was their summer rental. This poem moved me to find the book which I was able to sleuth with my good friend, google.
Made in Detroit is divided into 6 chapters with poems in broad topic areas ranging from growing up in Detroit, nature, politics of the moment, Judaism, and possibly autobiographical poems about the past and past relationships. It was hard for me to be selective about what to quote here as I enjoyed so many of her poems. This is a book of poetry I would certainly like to own and it has spurred me to look out for more of Piercy's books.
One of my favorites is Little Diurnal Tragedies. Over the last 5 to 6 years my wife and I have spent a lot of time on the road taking our kids back and forth to various areas of the state of Michigan for college. Right now, we are just going back and forth to East Lansing but every time I am struck by the number of animals lying dead by the side of the road....it just bothers me more and more, especially knowing what is happening with the crashing populations of large and small animals throughout the world. Marge Piercy's poem expresses this tragedy well....
Little Diurnal Tragedies
Mercy for the dog lying broken
backed in the road while the car
that hit it speeds off.
Mercy for the wren baby pushed
from the nest by the bigger hatchling--
egg the cowbird deposited.
Mercy for the green turtles caught
in the sudden cold of the bay
when the nor'easter blows.
Mercy for the pregnant cat thrown
out to starve, nursing her five kittens
among garbage and broken glass.
Mercy for the geese the golfers
want poisoned because they disturb
the green beside already polluted pools.
Mercy for the birds trying to fly
south on ancient routes, blinded
by our lights, dying on skyscrapers.
All around us are creatures we barely
notice, trying to preserve their only
lives among our machinery,
among our smog and smoke, inside
our radiation, among the houses and
roads built on their once habitats.
This poem perfectly expresses what many are thinking right now in this US that is slowly turning fiction into fact...think Margaret Atwood.
Ethics for Republicans
An embryo is precious;
a woman is a vessel.
A fertilized egg is a person;
a woman is indentured to it.
An embryo is sacred until birth.
After that, he/she is on their own.
Abortion is murder. Rape,
incest are means to an end:
that precious fertilized egg
housed in an expendable body.
Let us make babies and babies
and babies; children are something
else, probably future criminals,
probably welfare cheats whose
education hikes taxes. You
can freely dispose of them.
Read
August 8, 2021I had mixed feelings about this collection. I really enjoyed Piercy's poems about nature and/or gardening, and also her Jewish poems; they both had a sense of the patterns and cycles of life. But I felt that her Detroit poems were repetitive in both tone and language, and her more political poems were a bit too straightforward for me.
I also felt she had several poems along these lines: 1. Here is something from nature, strikingly and incisively described 2. This is like social phenomenon X. I felt that these would've worked better for me if the analogy was less explicitly spelled out.
Bonus gripe: she had a whole poem about how much she's inconvenienced by people who have specific dietary needs. Uh? Can we please not do this?
(The Sealey Challenge 2021 #6)
______
Source of the book: Bought with my own money
I also felt she had several poems along these lines: 1. Here is something from nature, strikingly and incisively described 2. This is like social phenomenon X. I felt that these would've worked better for me if the analogy was less explicitly spelled out.
Bonus gripe: she had a whole poem about how much she's inconvenienced by people who have specific dietary needs. Uh? Can we please not do this?
(The Sealey Challenge 2021 #6)
______
Source of the book: Bought with my own money
April 9, 2023
One of the better poetry books I’ve read in awhile! Piercy included a number of engaging, interesting, and heartfelt poems in this collection. While at times some of the topics and/or the text could feel a little repetitive, overall she crafted a very solid piece. I’d definitely read more of her work.
I’d recommend this to poetry fans that like exploring themes like nature, Judaism, love, and, of course, Detroit.
I’d recommend this to poetry fans that like exploring themes like nature, Judaism, love, and, of course, Detroit.
December 10, 2019
Really a joy to read and savor a few at a time. I've lived near Detroit for 50 years and have watched its ups and downs. I loved her poems that described her early days here. The ones on long term relationships and aging were evocative and on the mark. The political poems felt the weakest to me despite the fact that I agreed with her about everything.
December 11, 2025
I love you Marge Piercy. This book felt like a walk in a botanic gardens, a stroll through her life. I don’t consider myself someone that likes poetry but this made me tear up. The aching for her mother. The aching for justice in the world. Her work feels like a bruise. It hurts to the touch, but it’s beautiful as it creeps over your skin.
September 20, 2020
Arguably the poet to whom I most relate in writing and in life - ironically, she comes from my hometown. Many of the final paragraphs of these poems (and all of the single poem “made in detroit”) merit 5 stars and more than 5 re-reads and 5 hours of contemplation.
April 11, 2018
The beginning poems of her childhood and adolescence struck me the most.
Favorite poems:
Our neverending entanglement
These bills are long unpaid
The visible and the in-
Favorite poems:
Our neverending entanglement
These bills are long unpaid
The visible and the in-
December 13, 2020
From “Looking Back in Utter Confusion”-
“Sometimes I think I am a fiction
And only memories strung together
Hold my life to some coherence”
“Sometimes I think I am a fiction
And only memories strung together
Hold my life to some coherence”
August 7, 2023
What is it about good poems who get to a point in their career and rest on their laurels. Wasn't her best, she's old, she's tired, she is running out of things to say.
January 2, 2024
I just really like several of her other collections a lot more. This one of course had some really good poems.
August 31, 2024
hooooly shit where has marge piercy been all my life
February 24, 2025
Great poetry, great book.
March 20, 2025
Powerful, heartfelt poetry of the author's coming of age experiences
May 5, 2025
I haven’t had much leisure time to read this month but when I have picked up this book I found several gems and plenty of food for thought.
April 22, 2017
Marge Piercy illuminates issues of childhood and home life, spirituality, relationships, nature cats and even splatters bits of politics within her descriptive images.
I read the collection straight through, in a little over two hours.
I read the collection straight through, in a little over two hours.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews