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On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light: Poems
Another winning collection from one of our most read and enjoyed poets: a bountiful group of poems that reflect on language, nature, old age, young love, Judaism, and our current politics—all in her usual direct and mind-tingling fashion.
"Words are my business," Marge Piercy begins her twentieth collection of poetry, a glance back at a lifetime of learning, loving, grieving, and fighting for the disenfranchised, and a look forward at what the future holds for herself, her family and friends, and her embattled country. In the opening pages, Piercy tells of her childhood in Detroit, with its vacant lots and scrappy children, the bike that gave her wings, her ambition at fourteen to "gobble" down all knowledge, a too early marriage ("I put on my first marriage / like a girdle my skinny body / didn't need"). We then leap into what she calls the "twilight zone," where she is "learning to be quiet," learning to give praise despite it all. There are funny poems about medicine ads with their dire warnings, and some possible plusses about being dead: "I'll never do another load of laundry . . ." There is "comfort in old bodies / coming together," in a partner's warmth—"You're always warm: warm hands / smooth back sleek as a Burmese cat./ Sunny weather outside and in." Piercy has long been known for her political poems, and here we have her thoughts on illegal immigrants, dying languages, fraught landscapes, abortion, President-speak. She examines her nonbeliever's need for religious holidays and spiritual depth, and the natural world is appreciated throughout. On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light is yet more proof of Piercy's love and mastery of language—it is moving, stimulating, funny, and full of the stuff of life.
"Words are my business," Marge Piercy begins her twentieth collection of poetry, a glance back at a lifetime of learning, loving, grieving, and fighting for the disenfranchised, and a look forward at what the future holds for herself, her family and friends, and her embattled country. In the opening pages, Piercy tells of her childhood in Detroit, with its vacant lots and scrappy children, the bike that gave her wings, her ambition at fourteen to "gobble" down all knowledge, a too early marriage ("I put on my first marriage / like a girdle my skinny body / didn't need"). We then leap into what she calls the "twilight zone," where she is "learning to be quiet," learning to give praise despite it all. There are funny poems about medicine ads with their dire warnings, and some possible plusses about being dead: "I'll never do another load of laundry . . ." There is "comfort in old bodies / coming together," in a partner's warmth—"You're always warm: warm hands / smooth back sleek as a Burmese cat./ Sunny weather outside and in." Piercy has long been known for her political poems, and here we have her thoughts on illegal immigrants, dying languages, fraught landscapes, abortion, President-speak. She examines her nonbeliever's need for religious holidays and spiritual depth, and the natural world is appreciated throughout. On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light is yet more proof of Piercy's love and mastery of language—it is moving, stimulating, funny, and full of the stuff of life.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 29, 2020
26 people are currently reading
180 people want to read
About the author
Marge Piercy
113 books923 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 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 22, 2022
So many gems here but this one, in particular, stayed with me:
What happiness looks like
Some things are ordinary but perfect:
drinking coffee on Sunday mornings
with you as the cats laze about, fed,
on you or on me or curled together
in the bay window on a sunny pillow.
Outside the weeping beech stirs
in the wind, leaves hanging down
like just washed long tresses.
We talk softly of the pending day.
This is all I would need of heaven
that I don’t believe in, but this
I believe.
What happiness looks like
Some things are ordinary but perfect:
drinking coffee on Sunday mornings
with you as the cats laze about, fed,
on you or on me or curled together
in the bay window on a sunny pillow.
Outside the weeping beech stirs
in the wind, leaves hanging down
like just washed long tresses.
We talk softly of the pending day.
This is all I would need of heaven
that I don’t believe in, but this
I believe.
October 8, 2020
I've loved Marge Piercy since "A Woman on the Edge of Time". This book is a special treat though. I listened to the audiobook because she narrated it from her home "because there is nothing else to do this year". The poems on aging, Trump and the children trapped in detention camps at our border we're especially powerful. Must read!!
May 21, 2022
I always love Marge Piercy's poetry.
April 25, 2022
Absolutely loved this collection of poems.
March 12, 2023
sweet honesty
As I age, I wonder what my place and purpose will be. Piercy’s directness is her poetry, and her unabashed memories, memorializing, anger, lust, and musings move me to see my own future as equally fecund and exciting.
As I age, I wonder what my place and purpose will be. Piercy’s directness is her poetry, and her unabashed memories, memorializing, anger, lust, and musings move me to see my own future as equally fecund and exciting.
January 13, 2021
Excellent
November 1, 2020
Another excellent book of poems, although I wish they had not been organized in sections. Some would have had more impact if I hadn't just read several others about the same subject. Mixing them up might have worked better.
October 1, 2020
I am a huge fan of her work...and found this collection to be one of her best.
March 31, 2022
Absolutely lovely. The best and worst of living all laid out in plain and powerful words.
November 11, 2021
My reasons to love a collection of poems:
1. How it makes me feel
2. The way in which it allows me to observe the world around me
3. The impact it brings that makes it truly memorable
In this case, I’m the cat by the door constantly surprised by what I’ll be greeted with everytime it opens.
4.5/5⭐️ It begins with the fragility of life, the toils of the world and its plethora of injustice, the warmth and tenderness of love, the changing seasons and the massive adoration of nature and animals (mostly cats as pets of course since the writer’s an avid cat lover).
1. How it makes me feel
2. The way in which it allows me to observe the world around me
3. The impact it brings that makes it truly memorable
In this case, I’m the cat by the door constantly surprised by what I’ll be greeted with everytime it opens.
4.5/5⭐️ It begins with the fragility of life, the toils of the world and its plethora of injustice, the warmth and tenderness of love, the changing seasons and the massive adoration of nature and animals (mostly cats as pets of course since the writer’s an avid cat lover).
December 6, 2023
I cannot begin to say how much I loved reading this. From beginning to end, like watching a beautiful life unfold, from poems about childhood to breaking up to politics to love and love-making to the wonderment of cats and the blessings and lessons of the natural world, this straight-talking poet is so full of wisdom, truth, honesty, clarity, and deep, powerful emotions. It was akin to listening to the words of a wise grandmother, an oracle, a distraught but courageous sister—I was changed and forever altered.
January 24, 2021
Still reading, and greatly enjoying. A good book to pick up, put down after a while, then pick up again a bit later. It’s nice to identify with the visions created of the natural world. “For your information - from your pharmacist” had me laughing out loud (not much I read achieves that). That Piercy has found a lasting and deep love comes through strongly. Recommend, even for those who do not read poetry often.
July 4, 2022
One of my favorite poets, I found Piercy at a relatively young age and have loved her ever since.
This may be my favorite collection of hers yet, with poems of family, pets, life, death. These poems just resonate in a way her writing hasn't necessarily done before.
This may be my favorite collection of hers yet, with poems of family, pets, life, death. These poems just resonate in a way her writing hasn't necessarily done before.
April 11, 2025
Piercy is almost twenty years older than me, but nevertheless I relate to so many of her themes in this collection. She has honed her ways with words, and so powerfully and succinctly expresses the emotions, the observations, the wisdom of an elder, of a fiercely strong woman.
March 14, 2021
Iconic poet, contemplating aging and looking back on her life and world from this vantage point. So many gems.
April 14, 2021
3.5 rounded up to 4.
Nostalgic poems focused on life review, nature, cats, politics, marriage.
Nostalgic poems focused on life review, nature, cats, politics, marriage.
May 7, 2021
I loved every poem and savoured the reading. Piercy knows how to move me and I feel so good after reading her poetry.
June 20, 2021
When I thought Marge Pierce could not write any better...a masterpiece for our time.
January 29, 2023
A delightful, thoughtful collection of poems. Comfortable and familiar, reflective.
April 5, 2023
4.5/5
Sometimes preachy, yet somehow always authentic.
The best stuff here is REALLY great.
Sometimes preachy, yet somehow always authentic.
The best stuff here is REALLY great.
Read
March 27, 2024Okay lady, calm down.
January 21, 2025
A very strong collection of poems overall
April 16, 2025
Some good poetry from Marge
All the poems are at least good. There are a few very good, but no exceptional poems in this collection. This is well worth a read.
All the poems are at least good. There are a few very good, but no exceptional poems in this collection. This is well worth a read.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews