Piercy, Marge

Pesach for the Rest of Us: Making the Passover Seder Your Own

Average customer rating:

Offbeat pesach musings
very personal, very interesting, and useful
Make Passover even more meaningful this year
I THOUGHT IT WAS A PARODY
Thought-provoking!

Pesach for the Rest of Us: Making the Passover Seder Your Own
Marge Piercy
Manufacturer: Schocken
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Kosher | Special Diet | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Jewish Life | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Kosher Foods | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Cookbooks | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Religion & Spirituality Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Modern Jewish Mom's Guide to Shabbat: Connect and Celebrate--Bring Your Family Together with the Friday Night Meal
Creating Lively Passover Seders: An Interactive Sourcebook of Tales, Texts & Activities
Sammy Spider's First Haggadah (Passover)
A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices
Passover Around the World (Passover)

ASIN: 0805242422
Release Date: 2007-02-20

Book Description

Every year, poet and novelist Marge Piercy creates her own Passover seder with a group of family and friends. Babies have been born and grown up, friends have moved or divorced, but the principals continue to gather in her rustic Cape Cod home to participate in a seder that Piercy takes joy in tweaking each spring to make it more meaningful. In this journey through the ritual, Piercy coaxes us toward “a significant contemporary interpretation, rather than an emphasis on what is strictly ‘correct’ or traditional.” She reminisces about her grandmother, who thought herself unworthy to lead a seder because of her limited Hebrew but presided “morally” at the table; she urges adding an orange to the seder plate; she even describes her heroic efforts to make her own gefilte fish (an experiment not to be repeated).

Piercy offers her distinct slant on each element of the feast and provides dozens of her own wonderful recipes, which she delivers in the same warm, commanding voice as is heard in her poems and prose: “When I told Ira that I was going to explain how to cook matzoh brei, he thought I was crazy. Everybody knows how to make matzoh brei, he said. But I am of the opinion that there is no longer anything that everybody knows how to cook.”

It is in that spirit–no question too simple–that Piercy welcomes readers to her kind of seder: a homemade and personal affair, the kind we all wish we could attend. This charming and instructive book of Passover wisdom, brimming with favorite dishes and Marge Piercy’s own moving Passover poems and blessings, invites us to look at an important Jewish ritual in a whole new way.

Customer Reviews:

Offbeat pesach musings.......2007-05-06

As a fan of Marge Piercy's writings, I was curious about this new endeavor. I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was and the memories it evoked for me. Our Passover seders always include new poetry (many of them from her previous poetry books)and readings, and my attitude about Pesach mirrors hers, "whatever works, do it". I was so impressed that I sent a copy to my niece. Her recipes were an added feature and the macaroons came out great.

very personal, very interesting, and useful.......2007-04-09

Jewish tradition and feminism collide in this book. I found the tension fascinating. There are a lot of personal stories, a lot of recipes done the way I cook ("add a little of this, or, if you don't like it, add a little of that.") There were a few new poems, but the ones I liked best are already in The Art of Blessing the Day. I didn't always agree with her, but she always provided food for thought. At my seder, I found myself citing this book several times. Plus I cooked a tsimmes from one of her recipes, and it was quite good.
This is far from being a haggadah; just commentary on the various sections of the seder and a lot of interesting stories and recipes.

Make Passover even more meaningful this year.......2007-04-02

I really appreciate this book. It is respectful of tradition but it also helps to infuse the holiday with personal relevance, which is what it's all about anyway. I love the poems, the prayers, the recipes and wonderful stories that add such richness. Pick and choose what's meaningful to you and "pass over" the rest!

I THOUGHT IT WAS A PARODY.......2007-04-02

In the Thirties in the USSR Ms. Piercy would have been a Stalinist hack. This is the most slavish and trite abasement of Jewish tradition to PC platitudes that I have ever seen. For a so-called 'poet' there isn't the slightst trace of history, collective memory and awe that has always infused the Passover, even for the barely observant Jew. It is deeply offensive and truly revolting. It is like reading bumper stickers. If this is the 'only seder some marginal Jews can tolerate' I wish they'd stay away from the table.

Thought-provoking!.......2007-03-26

A must-read before Pesach for the traditionalist or modern Jew alike. A very easy book to read packed with information and advice. The recipes look great too!

Average customer rating:

Not what I expected
A lot of Marge and not so much cats
I can't lie, I sobbed....
Piercy's view of Piercy
Painful truthfulness

Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir
Marge Piercy
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Biographies | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Home & Garden Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Three Women: A Novel
So You Want To Write: How To Master The Craft Of Writing Fiction And Memoir
The Moon Is Always Female
The Third Child : A Novel
Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York

ASIN: 0066211158
Release Date: 2001-12-24

Book Description

A stirring memoir from the acclaimed writer praised by Thomas Pynchon for having "the guts to go into the deepest core of herself, her time, her history, and risk more than anybody else has so far, just out of a love for the truth and a need to tell it."

Called "breathtakingly ambitious" by the New York Times for her novels' forays into war, history, the lives of the homeless, and the minds of cyborgs, Marge Piercy, one of the few writers of our time to be highly praised as both a poet and a novelist, turns her lens inward for the first time as she shares her thoughts on life and explores her development as a woman and writer. She revisits the people and places that have shaped her experiences and inspired her work. And she pays tribute to the one loving constant that has offered her comfort and meaning even as the faces and events in her life have changed: her beloved cats.

With searing honesty Piercy tells of her strained childhood growing up in a religiously split working-class family in Detroit. She examines her myriad friendships and relationships, including two painful early marriages, and reveals their effects on her creativity and career. More than a reminiscence of things past, however, Sleeping with Cats is also a celebration of the present and the future, as Piercy shares her views on aging, creativity, and finding a lasting and improbable love with a man fourteen years younger than herself. A chronicle of the turbulent and exciting journey of one artist's life, Sleeping with Cats is a deeply intimate, unforgettable story.

Customer Reviews:

Not what I expected.......2006-11-04

This book was NOT what I expected. If you're wanting a book about CATS and ONLY cats, this is NOT the book for you...but if you're like me and fell inlove with the title and love cats, and are willing to give this book a chance--you WON'T REGRET IT.

It is a GREAT book, all about the life of the author and growing up Jewish and everything else that comes with being a little girl who does love cats...but can't seem to hang on to them...thanks to dear ole dad.

I hated to see it end.

A lot of Marge and not so much cats.......2006-08-28

I was hoping this would be more about cats since I am researching writing a cat book, but instead it was a great deal about the author Marge Piercy, her entire life, in fact. Since I was unfamiliar with her work, reading her life story in such detail was of little interest to me, although I found parts of it -- the struggle to find time to write and balance a marriage at the same time -- interesting. But her chapters on her cats, especially when they were sick or dying, moved me greatly. I ended the book crying since Oboe dies in the last chapter, and forgot how long it took me to get to this very moving part. So...if you are interested in the author, you will feel like her friend by the time you finish. If you are interested only in cats, skip around to the chapters where she focuses on them.

I can't lie, I sobbed...........2006-02-25

I am a cataloging librarian and was working on Marge's latest novel when I decided to read up on her other books. As a new cat owner and a passionate woman I was attracted to this autobiography. Rarely do we ever see a memoir of a famous author's pets! I have to honestly say this is the best autobiography I have read in years. Yes, the language isn't perfect, just like the author, but it is a beautiful tale. I couldn't be more oppisite, not to mention from a totally different generation, then Ms. Piercy but I could still heartfully relate to her emotions. Her poems are treats and magically written. Yes, she does jump around and mentions things several times at different parts of the book but isn't that the way we speak of a memory? She is honest and wants you to become her companion, not a distance audience. If you have a pet you will relate to her heartfelt goodbyes to her beloved children. She keeps mentioning how she does not regret never having children, however this whole piece is her relationships with her 4 legged kids!:) What a beautiful, sincere and talented woman she is - I hope to one day meet her (update: I did! And brought this book. She told me that rarely do people bring this one when they meet her, she thought it was magical). I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an open soul.

Piercy's view of Piercy.......2005-08-10

Like most autobiographies of famous folks this book is best in the part before she become Marge Piercy, famous feminist author. She gives a straight picture of her life growing up in a working class and lower middle class areas of Detroit in the forties and early 1950s which is my favorite part of the book. There is the toughness and rawness of working class life, the ambiguousness of sexuality, and some of the stark hard knocks realities of the utter cruelty of children, and the far distance parents are.

The second favorite part of the book is her discussion of her hard struggling days attempting to be, refusing to be, being knarled at being a proper young middle class wife in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as her fight to become a writer and not a literature academic.

Marge does very well in those areas. Once she gets to around 1966 (where I came into this movie) she just goes too darned fast. Instead of taking time to narrate things, she starts giving her opinions about things. I am familiar with the places and people and things she speaks about in New York in the late 1960s, but I wonder if someone one who wasn't there would be able to follow what she talks about.

This book says almost nothing about Piercy as a writer except how she fought to write in her life in college, how writing saved her and gave her back her world in her hard days after her first marriage ended, and the general fight to have time to write and not have to do other stuff to earn a living after she became "established."

Yet, she never talks about different writers who inspired her, how she actually works, how she stands on disputes over techniques, how she sees her poetry and her fiction, or how she answers the questions that many of us have about the two Marges, the ham fisted strong willed plot boiling fiction writer who does the job and goes on without much verbal flare or subltety and the delicate, sensitive, lyrical poet she has always been, although even in the poem's The Marge's mastery of plain talk from the heart runs through.

I haven't said anything about cats. The cats in this book are not a gimmick. If you read the book--I won't spoil it--you will understand that from childhood, cats have been a special part of her life and identity. It is really necessary to know her for her to explain the relationships she has had with each of the cats that has inhabited her life. Just as necessary as for her to explain each of her parents and her husbands.

I confess to be an unbiased fan of Marge Piercy as both a writer and a person whom I admire. For me, this book gives more sense to different autobiographical threads in her work and clarifies confusions I had about her age (I thought she was about 10 years younger than she is from the times I have seen her, from all the good things I know she has done for people I know, always behind the scenes never trying to get the credit she is due).

Yet, I am not sure how interesting this would be for someone who is not a Piercy fan.

I would recommend that the reader who likes the pre-success part of Marge's story read her two more autobiographical novels Braided Lives and Small Changes. These were among her first books and seem to be neglected these days. There is a lot of meaning in both of those books. In fact, I used to read Braided Lives annually, or when I was in a tight fix personally--stolen cars, lost girl friends, fear of losing my job.

Painful truthfulness.......2002-10-14

Marge Piercy is well-known for her poetry and for her semi-science fiction novel "Woman on the Edge of Time." She has won literary awards and is certainly an American woman writer of great note. Her honesty and brutal clarity in rendering her memoirs is that more startling, as much of it is unpleasant and she hardly spares herself.

Piercy grew up in a lower class Detroit neighborhood, and was brutally beaten by her father while her needs as an adolescent girl were pretty much ignored by her mother. She found love in girl gangs, had illicit sex with both girls and boys, and yet was accepted to University of Michigan, the best public university in the state. Her career there was as an outsider--she was not the typical well-off, middle class sorority or dorm co-ed with cashmere sweaters and pearls. Instead, Piercy started the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and wrote, winning the prestigious Hopwood writing award at U of M.

Her writing career spanned the times she belonged to communes, then became disenchanted with the increasingly dogmatic Marxist left movement in the 60's. She bounced from Europe to New York to Boston, to Cape Cod, now her home.

In all her writing, Piercy has an uncanny ability to describe her minute observations of place and feeling, a gift attributes to her emotional mother. She expresses the anger at her distant and brutal father, whom she obliquely blames for her mother's death (she had a stroke and he did not call the ambulance service until he had meticulously picked up every fragment of a fluorescent bulb she had broken during her fall.) Her "open marriage" is described with all the ambiguity of such a relationship.

No one writes more grittily, more deeply observant than Piercy--the parts of "Woman on the Edge of Time" where the main character is struggling to leave an insane asylum, are so realistic and troubling, it helps to know Piercy from her memoirs to better understand her craft. If you like Piercy's writing, this memoir is a fine way to get to know her and to gain a better understanding of how she creates her fiction and poetry.

Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York
Average customer rating:

Great Read -Women Lives in Post-Civil War Times

was ok

Portrays the zest of a time of great change!

An Enjoyable Piece of Brain Candy

four stars for subject matter, zero style points

Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York
Marge Piercy
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Piercy, Marge | ( P ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Third Child : A Novel

Gone to Soldiers

Woman on the Edge of Time

Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir

Three Women: A Novel

ASIN: 0060789875
Release Date: 2006-11-21

Book Description

Post-Civil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison—as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books.

In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.

Customer Reviews:

Great Read -Women Lives in Post-Civil War Times.......2007-05-29

I really enjoyed reading Sex Wars. Many of the characters were real people (especially women) fighting to live out their goals and dreams in the 1870's and 1880's. When I finished the book I had to immediately look up the real life stories of Victoria Woodhull (notorious free love speaker, stockbroker and medium), Anthony Comstock (fighter of profanity who goes too far), Susan Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Vanderbilt. The fictional character of Freydah was great too. She really made me imagine what it would be like to be an immigrant back in the late 1800's -as a woman who lost her spouse, as a non native speaker, without spousal support, without money, and without laws protecting her from harm and unfairness, and as someone who had to work tirelessly just to make it and fight against prejudice and the social grain. -How different life was for the single woman and the married woman. This book truly highlights this.

I liked the structure of the book and found it suspenseful. Each chapter was from a different character's point of view and would then rotate back to each character again chapter by chapter. This book helped me to see a glimpse of what America was like during this time period. It helps one see how the events and attitudes of the past frame and contribute to the politics and attitudes that we have today -especially concerning women. It is so interesting to think about the people who come before us. The only things I found not so great: I felt Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who are incredible women to me could have been written about a little more interestingly.

was ok.......2007-01-10

not what i expected as far as the story goes, but in excellent condition

Portrays the zest of a time of great change!.......2006-04-21

Piercy paints a portrait of women who were intelligent and gutsy in a time that did not reward those qualities in women. Of course we don't hear much about them now because history under-reports the feats of women. The fact that these women thought for themselves and led innovative lives was amazing considering the oppression that was the norm.

Some of the characters in this story were historic figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Comstock. Others were lesser known figures such as the psychic turned candidate for president Victoria Woodhull. I have to admit I was more interested in Woodhull and some of the fictional characters. It really didn't work to have the fictional and non-fictional characters together. I also didn't like the numerous head changes--I wanted to stick with the one story and see what happened. With so much shifting from on story to another I did not attach to or get to know any of the characters.

A really interesting book despite some flaws and well worth a read. It portrays the zest of a time of great change in American history.

An Enjoyable Piece of Brain Candy.......2006-02-15

I have to disagree with the other reviewers who felt that the narrative style of this novel ruined it for them. While it will never be included in the annals of "fine literature", this book remains an enjoyable read which I would have no hesitation in recommending to others.

four stars for subject matter, zero style points.......2006-02-06

The author took a fascinating subject and ruined my reading experience by writing at a level of English compositional skill that I would be more likely to attribute to Freydeh, her fictional Jewish immigrant character who came to New York illiterate in English and apparently learned only the minimum she needed to survive in the years that followed.

Average customer rating:

Excellent Utopian Text
What Might Be: A Worthwhile Fantasy in Time
an all time favorite
Great SF
Good read, but not a great time travel tale

Woman on the Edge of Time
Marge Piercy
Manufacturer: Fawcett
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Fiction & Fantasy Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Herland
He, She and It
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
The Cancer Journals: Special Edition
Longman Anthology of Women's Literature

ASIN: 0449210820
Release Date: 1985-11-12

Book Description

Connie Ramos, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been declared insane. But Connie is overwhelmingly sane, merely tuned to the future, and able to communicate with the year 2137. As her doctors persuade her to agree to an operation, Connie struggles to force herself to listen to the future and its lessons for today....

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Utopian Text.......2007-01-15

This story resonates with anyone who enjoyed the message in Egalia's Daughter's or even the YA book, The Giver. It is not for the casual reader, as the time travel takes a bit to follow, but the emotive content is so superior, and the societal messages so clear, I think everyone should read this book at some point in his/her life. It is now one of my favorites, and the craft is so excellent, even a creative writer would love to examine its construction. A wonderful classic.

What Might Be: A Worthwhile Fantasy in Time.......2007-01-02

I am a great fan of Marge Piercy's poetry - her skill at using simple and everyday language to capture everyday scenes and sensibilities in the inner and outer lives of strong women, and to shine upon them a sublime literary light - and so it was not difficult to convince me to break out of my usual reading, decidedly not science fiction, to spend time with this "time-traveling novel." That play on words, mind you, is quite intentional. I soon sensed, within the first pages, that this is the kind of story plotline (and the writing skill to make it succeed convincingly) that traverses time and retains meaning and interest, no matter the year. Some things change, some things never do.

Being familiar with Piercy's poetry and something of her own biography, I expected a feminist approach to the plot. Indeed, it was there, and this is why I was soon confident in my enjoyment of the novel, even if it did veer from my more typical reading choices. Whatever the genre, I like to read about strong and unique women. "Woman on the Edge of Time" has plenty, in the now and in the to be.

Consuelo (Connie) in the 1970s lives a life of poverty and abuse, when domestic violence is as common as air, and women survive all too often by selling themselves out as objectified beings, bodies without minds, without souls. A pimp beats up "his" women to maintain order, in this case, to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, and a scene of violence ensues, in which Connie is made the villain rather than the victim. She can say nothing to prevent herself from being institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, called mad, whereas the male's voice, that of the pimp's, holds unquestioned weight. He has her out of his way to create more victims.

I couldn't help but draw parallels here with another literary classic, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, and even some undertones of Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale," but Piercy succeeds in making this story her own. Connie strives to maintain her sanity by traveling in time to another life in 2137, assisted by future person (Piercy uses "per" as pronoun, thus avoiding gender designation of she or he in this future), Luciente, a kind of almost andrygenous being. In that future, she explores a life much more pleasing, if not utopian, and in series of trips, explores this future world in its treatment of relationships, the interchange of genders and generations, the workings of community and government, the balance between work and play, spiritual evolvement, and even the occasional war. For it is not utopia, but a constant work in progress, however more evolved than our current day, with humankind in an ongoing mode of self-improvement.

No less fascinating is a shorter description of a darker parallel of life in the future, when Connie misses her usual destination and lands instead in a future that could just as easily, one fears, evolve from our current time. In this future, women are even more objectified than they are today, creatures resembling comic book and Barbie doll fantasy proportions, created by plastic surgery, produced specifically and only for the erotic pleasures of men, becoming sexual slaves. Mind reading allows for no privacy, no chance of escape. A woman might only think of the possibility of escape, and already she is reined in and punished. It is a world of callousness and cruelty, domination of gender over gender, power and greed ruling all, happiness for none.

In the hospital, woven through the story, Connie struggles for her sanity, as the doctors in power rule out any possibility of what they cannot understand, puzzled by her episodes of "unconsciousness," and many in the ward are forced to undergo brain-altering surgery. Connie, too, undergoes repeated surgeries. Her attempts at escape, sometimes in mind but sometimes also in body, can be heartrending, as she comes so close, so close...

This is a story worth reading, if not for intriguing storyline, than as a philosophical treatise on what could be, what might be, what a future for humankind might hold if we approach it with understanding. Whether Connie truly travels in time or only in fantasy is perhaps least important of all. Those who pick it up as science fiction fans might be disappointed if seeking high tech descriptions and complex alien worlds; this is not Piercy's intent. She is far more interested in exploring the evolvement of humankind if all are allowed to pursue their best, towards a world of harmony and a caring community that works on all practical levels.

While I still prefer Piercy's poetry to this sampling of her prose (my first, but probably not my last), her skill and imagination to produce worlds that intrigue as well as enlighten is worthwhile reading.

an all time favorite.......2006-11-25

It is frightening how much of life reminds me of this book... and its possible futures. most of my utopic daydreams and realities have had their roots in this novel. a great jumping off point!

Great SF.......2005-08-15

Piercy's novel is an entertaining and historically important work of Science Fiction, exemplifying many of the technological as well as feminist concerns of her time.

Good read, but not a great time travel tale.......2005-06-25

I had picked up this book specifically because it had time travel involved and I'm a time travel nut. In this particular book, the main character, Connie, "travels" to the future, the year 2137 supposedly. Of course, since she is in a mental institution, there is a bit of the theme: Is she crazy or is it real? The writing was well done, the character development was fantastic. The time travel was left wanting. This is a great drama story, a good woven tale. I feel a bit jilted as the author left the ending too open ended, as if just to create a forever left argument over her schizophrenia or time travel. That felt a bit too contrived. A good open ending can let you argue one way or the other based upon your reading. This book's open ending was too open...and no good basis could be derived for either telling. A great read, a disappointing end. I wouldn't have even normally left this review for a 3 star book, but with all these 5 star ratings which led to me buy it, I felt the whole spectrum needed to be represented.

Average customer rating:

Rich and Captivating
What a wonderful book!!
Close Encounters of the Thought-Provoking Kind
a favorite

Circles on the Water
Marge Piercy
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

My Mother's Body
What Are Big Girls Made Of?: Poems
The Moon Is Always Female
Stone, Paper, Knife
Colors Passing Through Us : Poems

ASIN: 0394707796
Release Date: 1982-05-12

Book Description

More than 150 poems from her seven books of poetry written between 1963 and 1982.

Customer Reviews:

Rich and Captivating.......2000-08-19

I had never read Marge Piercy until I found a poem of hers in an anthology and then rushed out to find whatever I could find written by her. That is substantial. I love this book. It contains a wide range of emotions and subjects, all written in a style that makes the poem easy to identify with, while containing multiple layers that make it new every time you read it. Highly recommended.

What a wonderful book!!.......1999-07-31

I truly love this book. It includes a fine sampling of Ms. Piercy's work. There are love poems, feminist poems, poems about animals and vegetables and living at the Cape. I bought the book about 15 years ago and I continue to read these poems. Each time I do I get something new. A must-have for anyone who loves poetry!

Close Encounters of the Thought-Provoking Kind.......1998-01-06

Once, maybe twice, in a lifetime is such a soul as Marge Piercy found. I was inching through the Poetry section of a local bookstore, head tilted to read all the titles, when I paused and rubbed out a cramp in my neck. I stood before a book taller than those on either side. I scanned the cover- plain, yet appealing- opened to a random page, and began reading. After the third poem, a powerful piece centered around rape, I decided to buy it. A few quarters jingled in an otherwise empty pocket. Fine, if I were only paying the sales tax! I wasn't able to return for three months. It was gone. Now I find that it is out of stock. No tears are shed, but the sadness remains. Piercy is one of the finest poets of the 20th century. I'll be looking for future works, and keep larger sums of cash(or credit) in my wallet.

a favorite.......1997-08-05

I love Marge Piercy's poems and this book is the best collection I know. Her clear thinking, uncompromising feminism, her brassy humor, and her hopeful insight have been a delight that I return to again and again

Average customer rating:

Spiritual SF
Great feminist cyberpunk
Great love story
both historical fiction and sci-fi
Matrix Revisited

He, She and It
Marge Piercy
Manufacturer: Fawcett
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Fiction & Fantasy Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Woman on the Edge of Time
The Female Man (Bluestreak)
Oryx and Crake
Gone to Soldiers
Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir

ASIN: 0449220605
Release Date: 1993-01-23

Book Description

"A triumph of the imagination. Rich, complex, impossible to put down."
Alice Hoffman
In the middle of the twenty-first century, life as we know it has changed for all time. Shira Shipman's marriage has broken up, and her young son has been taken from her by the corporation that runs her zone, so she has returned to Tikva, the Jewish free town where she grew up. There, she is welcomed by Malkah, the brilliant grandmother who raised her, and meets an extraordinary man who is not a man at all, but a unique cyborg implanted with intelligence, emotions--and the ability to kill....
From the imagination of Marge Piercy comes yet another stunning novel of morality and courage, a bold adventure of women, men, and the world of tomorrow.

Customer Reviews:

Spiritual SF.......2006-07-10

I always enjoy Marge Piercy's books, but I wish she'd write more SF, like this one is. Marge Piercy is at her best when she is unfettered by mere temporal facts.

The cyberpunk world of Marge Piercy's *He, She, and It* future is an environmental wreck where a few domed cities are decent places to live, and the rest of the world is gang-ridden and poisonous. The heroine of this book, Shira, is enmeshed in a bad situation and returns home to a Jewish stronghold domed city. (Although Piercy writes a lot about being Jewish, I really liked that some of the few freehold cities, which are not owned by corporations for their employees, are Jewish. It's like they covered Israel in glass for all posterity.) There, Shira meets Yod, an artificially intelligent robot/cyborg who is, to borrow a phrase, ...fully functional.

Shira lives with her grandmother, whose pithy wisdom becomes angelic at times. One thing that the grandmother said has stayed with me for years and shaped my own spirituality: (paraphrasing), that one cannot pray for things, because that is selfish. One can only pray for understanding. That changed me greatly. Now, when I hear or read that someone is praying "for" something, it sounds to me like a 5-year-old child praying for candy, an utterly selfish and useless prayer.

TK Kenyon
Author of Rabid, coming in 2007 from Kunati Book Publishers

Great feminist cyberpunk.......2005-03-29

This is easily my favorite cyberpunk novel, for several reasons:

The plot line is interesting and not simplistic. Another reviewer wrote that it was hard to follow. I disagree, and thought that the interweaved story telling added quite a bit and made it a much more interesting story.

The references to the golem stories, and for those who have studied them, the related ethical dilemmas are quite interesting.

Marge Piercy is a great writer. You won't find places where you trip over sentences, or struggle with flat characters.

The primary character is female, and I find that adds a lot to the perspective.

Great love story.......2004-11-06

I read this many years ago. It was originally published in 1991, so as far as sci-fi innovations and ideas, it's a bit behind, and perhaps was at the time. I really loved it when I read it initially, because I think it works primarily as a romance for those of us that aren't interested in "romantic fiction". I was just becoming interested in sci-fi, so I enjoyed that element at the time, and I enjoyed the Jewish historical tale of the golem that parallels the actual plot. There are leaps in logic, as one of the reviewers below pointed out, but as a love story, I think it's great. The characters are well-developed and grow. Yod is definitely "man redefined in the eyes of women", so I don't know if this would be appealing to male readers. (This has been called "feminist sci-fi" so let that be a warning to those who don't prefer.) But Yod's intelligent, macho, and groovy...so why not? Sort of the sensitive new age man, but with more kahonas, faster reflexes, and prowess in certain arts. ahem. Shira's relatable as a frustrated young woman, leaving an inappropriate marriage, and trying to avoid past mistakes.

both historical fiction and sci-fi.......2004-06-09

This novel presents parallel stories of the Golum of Prague and the cyborg of the future, both "men" created to protect the societies in which they were "born." Both evolve beyond "creature" or "robot" to become self-aware and fall in love with a human woman, and thus become so threatening that they are destroyed by the humans they seek to embrace. As a non-Jewish reader, I was inspired to look up the history of the golum in Jewish Kabbalah legends and surprised to find out that there is a statue of the legendary golum in Prague. The story stalls in the middle third as the same-old-love-story unfolds ... tediously. I would have liked more depth and detail on the various societies Piercy hints at in the future, expecially the great masses that survive in apparent anarchy in this post-apocalyptic world. The ending is too pat; why didn't Yod disappear into the Glop? Great concept, though.

Matrix Revisited.......2004-03-13

This novel is fully science-fiction in genre (for Marge Piercy is not afraid to dabble in whatever style interests her, from historical fiction, to memoir, to sci-fi, to poetry.) And "He, She and It" has many elements found in "The Matrix" (but "He, She and It" came out way before "Matrix) You wonder if the makers of that hit film series owe Ms. Piercy an enormous monetary debt of gratitude.

The story centers around Shira, a bright young woman who makes a bad mistake; she marries the wrong man. Pigeonholed by the large "multi" (corporation) who bid for her services when she graduated, she's living on borrowed time in the safe but stifling domed city built by her multi to house the workers and managers against the perils of the polluted open lands and even more perillous decayed and overpopulated metropolis ("Glop" for short.)

Shira doesn't realize how short her time really is, and how soon she will be moving on, leaving behind her job, and much much, more of value to her. She moves home to one of the free cities on the seashore, deemed unsafe by virtue of severe weather (a gift of global warming.) She moves in with her grandmother and takes a job with Avram, a cybernetics expert. Avram has created a golem, a robot, a protector of the Jewish free city. Shira is hired to teach the robot, and develops a strange relationship with the creature, who, like Frankenstein's monster, is filled with both love and hate. Meanwhile, she must deal with her own past and past loves, and learn why she made bad decisions. Shira threads a path filled with dangers, but comes out stronger and wiser. Not without a high price, however.

Piercy mixes the legend of the Golem from the Ghetto of Prague (a clay creature created by a rabbi to protect the people from a pogrom) and a fast-paced parallel story full of adventure. This story-by-story structure will be familiar to readers of other novels by Piercy such as "Woman on the Edge of Time" where a woman in an insane asylum shifts between her present reality and the future of the year 2037.

Book Description

In these powerful, often funny, sometimes lyrical, and down-to-earth poems, Marge Piercy writes of her “crooked inheritance”—physical and personality traits from wildly mismatched parents, and in a larger sense the marvelous half-broken world we inherit. Even her hometown Detroit provides a double legacy—a slum girlhood that breeds in her both wild ambition and, where you would least expect it, a love of nature, which she discovers in the city’s elms, “the thing of beauty on grimy smoke-bleared streets.”

Some of Piercy’s strongest poems have always been political, and here are important new verses raging against the war in Iraq, the abandonment of Katrina’s victims (“People penned to die in our instant / concentration camps, just add water”), and the ongoing attempts to suppress women—their rights, their bodies, their minds, their very being: “The CIA should hire as spies / only women over fifty, because we are the truly invisible.”

Other poems are about her life on Cape Cod, where she finds sanctuary in the long natural rhythms of the year’s cycle—gardening, making pesto, hearing coyotes in the winter “yelping in chorus after a kill,” a place where after weeks of rain and snow, the “sun gives birth to rosebushes,” and “everything revealed is magical, splendid in its ordinary shining.” Here, too, are wonderful love songs, about friends, lovers, a beautiful day, animals, making bread.

Deep connections to Jewish life and ritual reveal themselves in poems about her Lithuanian grandmother, about holidays, about the peace in a time of war that ceremony can bring, “an evening of honey on the tongue . . . a puddle of amber light . . . faces of friends . . . darkness walling off the room from what lies outside.”

These marvelous poems remind us anew of the breadth and strength of Marge Piercy’s poetic vision. A superb collection to read and treasure.

Customer Reviews:

Speaking her mind.......2006-11-13

I was fortunate to hear Marge Piercy read her poetry at The Wisconsin Book
Festival and I was blown away. What a joy to discover a new author to read
and recommend.

In "Tracks", Piercy portrays the multitude of roles we fill, not only
with our relatives and friends, but also to the animals we interact with in
our life journey.

In "Hollywood Haircut" she wonders if a $400 haircut would change her life
for the better but decides
"No,I thought so.
I'll stick to Sarah
and my $35 trim."

In "Mighty Big" Piercy considers the ramifications of our arrogant foreign
policy.

I am going to quote from "Swear It" regarding those who seem to be holier
than thou.

"It has always amazed me there are
words too potent to say to those
whose ears are tender as baby
lettaces-often those who label
us into narrow jars with salt and

vinegar,saying, People like THEM,
meaning me and mine. Never say
the K or N word, just quietly shut
and bolt the door. Just politely
insert their foot in the Other's face."

Average customer rating:

If you loved Gone With the Wind
Outworn worldview shows its age
You will read it, if not be thankful for this book
Entertaining and enjoyable, but light.
One of my favorite books

Gone to Soldiers
Marge Piercy
Manufacturer: Fawcett
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

City of Darkness, City of Light
Three Women: A Novel
Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir
Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York
Woman on the Edge of Time

ASIN: 0449215571
Release Date: 1988-04-12

Book Description

In a stunning tour-de-force, Marge Piercy has woven a tapestry of World War II, of six women and four men, who fought and died, worked and worried, and moved through the dizzying days of the war. A compelling chronicle of humans in conflict with inhuman events, GONE TO SOLIDERS is an unforgettable reading experience and a stirring tribute to the remarkable survival of the human spirit.
"Panoramic...This is a sweeping epic in the best sense."
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Customer Reviews:

If you loved Gone With the Wind.......2005-11-20

I rarely read sagas, but since several friends recommended this, I gave it a try. Now I remember why I'm usually careful about which ones I read. It doesn't help when many of the characters are just plain not likeable. Oscar and Abra? Eeeeuwww!!!! Daniel and Gloria? Eeeeuwww!!!! Zach and Bernice? Gross!!!! I guess if you think World War II was about desperate people having sex this book is for you. Plus the coincidence of characters crossing was beyond belief. In the context of this being a "serious historical novel" I find that inexcusable.

Some of the historical parts were interesting - Murray (with his nine lives) in the Pacific, Danielle's activities with the French Resistance, the bombings of London.

Years ago I read Herman Wouk's "War and Remembrance" and I remembered that it kept me spellbound. A great, popular WWII saga. For insight into the American experience both and home and abroad try Studs Terkel's "The Good War: An Oral History of World War II"

Outworn worldview shows its age.......2005-09-17

Written in the heyday of the "feminist" novel, Marge Piercy's "Gone to Soldiers" presents a snapshot of American history - only it's not the history we're led by the jacket blurbs to expect. Instead, it's a framework of late 20th century feminist dogma about life and people projected backward in time and super-imposed over the events of WWII.

All the obligatory sterotypes are here: the intelligent, creative woman denied her rightful self-actualization and fulfillment by imprisoning family obligations (no less than three versions of this type); the artistic bisexual male; the repressed spinster who uncovers her lesbian identity; the semi-androgynous girl heroine who is smarter, stronger and more capable than the men around her...and on and on. Abortion, divorce, aggressive female sex and broken families are an unqualified good. Conversely, every hetero white male is either a sexual brute, a timorous mouse or an adulterous slob. The American government/military is simultaneously hopelessly inept and pregnant with unspoken menace. Intact family life is, at best, a pitiable exercise, or at worst, a repressive prison. You get the picture.

This mindset exhibits itself in the characters' thoughts and reactions. A case in point: one of Piercy's women, a writer of popular ladies' fiction, obtains a post with the OSS in Washington. She finds that the men in her department barely listen to her ideas, and that she has little influence on policy. This, she immediately assumes, is the result of Washington's "patriarchal" climate and of sexual discrimination. Oh. It never seems to enter her mind that, perhaps, the men don't listen to her because she doesn't have anything worthwhile to say, that she is underqualified, that her past experience hasn't prepared her to make a serious contribution, that she is in over her head. No, because she's a woman, she must, BY DEFINITION, automatically be a victim of oppression because of her sex, regardless of the objective measure of her talents and skills. It would be a touch of genius if Piercy were objective enough to have conveyed this attitude in her heroine without sharing it herself. One gets the feeling, though, that Piercy is merely using the character to express a deeply entrenched personal conviction.

The novel is a sprawling affair, and Piercy keeps a commendable grasp of her multiple storylines. She also has a good mastery of shifting points of view. These afford some nice crossovers, linking in fresh ways the characters with which she peoples her landscape. The weakness lies in her characterizations. There is a depressing sameness in the personalities that the reader joins behind the eyes of her characters. The men, especially, are poorly drawn. They thoroughly lack a masculine psychology; they're merely congolomerations of feminine thought patterns and reactions with men's names appended and dialogue that's rougher and less refined. Piercy, unfortunately, just does not know how to write believable men.

By no stretch of the imagination is this a historical WWII novel. It's what WWII would have been, if everyone had been preoccupied with concerns that were at least two generations in the future. From a perspective of twenty years after its publication, the novel is an interesting study on an outworn worldview receding just as surely as WWII into the past.

You will read it, if not be thankful for this book.......2005-08-05

Marge Piercy is a writer I admire. As a person I admire her more. She has done a lot for writers, particularly women and minority writers. This book helped because the sales from the book and different rights for movies and TV mini series that were never made helped Marge obtain financial independence for her modest life, so she can devote more of it to writing, her spiritual and social vision, and less of it to teaching classes and doing poetry reading for cash.

This book isn't going to please a hard-core World War II history buff like myself. Nor will it please those like myself who believe the US, Britain and France were equally evil as Germany, Japan, and Italy. Moreover, Marge Piercy was forced to omit a planned segment on the war against the Soviet Union because she could not get funding for research on it.

However, if you like story telling, and you like the social, sexual, and political vision that Marge Piercy's non-sci-fi books express, you will enjoy this book. You will be taken through the times and the war from the point of view of working folks. You will see this world in a pro-Feminist view.

You will hang on and turn pages and feel the release the end of the war must have been, even as Marge is showing how the war was the beginning of things like the CIA marriage with academia.
This is the kind of book that you wish was longer.

Piercy as a novelist is not one of the great prose artists, nor is she one to produce subtle or delicately complex plots. She writes straight, hard and direct. Sometimes, you do feel a little bogged down by what I call her "sociology"--where the Marge is explaining social, political, and economic facts of life for her characters. Of course, most writers don't care about those aspects of life, particularly for the working people that Marge Piercy loves.

What Marge does is gives you a story, real people doing real things that you will care about and will give you a different message than 99 percent of the other offers. If you want fine words, check out Marge's many works of poetry where she is a great artist, intimate with words, judicious in their use, but never fooling around, always with something real to say.

Viva La Piercy!

Entertaining and enjoyable, but light........2005-07-15

If you are looking for a soap opera, you will like this book. The storyline is interesting, but the background of WWII is an interesting canvas. The book is very long (nearly 800 pages) and much of it is fluff. It can become tedious. Fortunately, it is divided into chapters by character, so if you don't connect with one you can skim their chapters and focus on others.

One of my favorite books.......2005-05-30

Like others here, I've reread this book so many times I've lost count. The characters are richly imagined, the plots gripping, and the historical context satisfying. Certainly, some characters are more vividly drawn and "real" than others - the Jewish-French resistance fighter will always stay with me, while the American artist/spy is a little less gripping- but it's a great cross-section.
I would especially recommend this as a gift to a teenager to get them interested in history. Did the trick for me.

So You Want To Write: How To Master The Craft Of Writing Fiction And Memoir

Average customer rating:

Practical and Worthwhile
Second Edition even better than the first!

So You Want To Write: How To Master The Craft Of Writing Fiction And Memoir
Marge Piercy , and Ira Wood
Manufacturer: Leapfrog Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books

Writing Skills | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Art Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Health Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Reference Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir
Writing the Memoir
Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir
Three Women: A Novel
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

ASIN: 097289845X

Book Description

"This is a great book, no matter what stage of writing you're at!"-The Writer Magazine

"Here is a must-have for would-be writers. Put this on the shelf right beside Strunk and White."-Booklist

"Addresses all the elements of successful writing."-Tampa Tribune

"Advice on getting your work published is worth the cost of the book alone."-St. Petersburg Times

A featured selection of the Writer's Digest Book Club; chosen by The Writer Magazine as a Best Book of the Year; compared by the American Library Association to Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style; acclaimed by critics, students and teachers and adopted by universities across the country, the unique collaboration between a major American novelist and a publisher is back in a revised second edition, bigger and better than ever.

The most useful and entertaining writing book on the market, the updated second edition has new exercises and expanded essays, covering every aspect of writing and publishing fiction and memoir:

<bu>How to begin a piece so that a reader can't put it down
<bu>How to create compelling characters
<bu>How professional writers use dialogue
<bu>How to narrow a strategy for telling the story of your life
<bu>How to write about painful material without coming off as a victim

Included are hundreds of insider tips, such as:

<bu>The seven important things when writing about loved ones
<bu>The 10 most destructive things writers do
<bu>What no one will tell you about rejection letters
<bu>FAQs about agents and how much writers really earn
<bu>What to do if your work is continually rejected

Marge Piercy is a New York Times best-selling novelist and memoirist. Ira Wood is a novelist and publisher. Their workshops, given nationally, address overcoming the inner and outer barriers to creativity.

Customer Reviews:

Practical and Worthwhile.......2007-03-02

I don't generally read this kind of book because I've read most of them and they tend to give good, but general and somewhat idealistic advice. However this one has a helpful section on plot- a chapter laced with examples from their slush pile and workshop experiences. I also enjoyed the 10 Most Destructive Things Writers Can Do....

Second Edition even better than the first!.......2006-06-20

Most of the time, reading books about writing improves one's writing as much as reading *The Joy of Running* improves one's cardivascular system. I have taught fiction to undergrads, and I usually tell them to spend their time at the keyboard rather than reading how-to books, which tend to be either facile or studiously dreamy.

However, *So you want to write* is based on Piercy's and Wood's workshops and exercises, and while no book will substitute for a good workshop, this book is worth your time. The suggested exercises point one's writing in new directions. The analyses of fiction examples within the book elucidate what was done right as well as deliniate what in the passages should be revised. The expanded exercises are worth purchasing the second edition, even if you already own the first version. The info about rejection slips and what they *really* mean is illuminating. The practical information about how a $100,000 advance is poverty wages is horrifying and absolutely essential to know.

This is an excellent book for writers seeking to explore the craft and broaden their writing.

TK

Average customer rating:

Picked it up and Never Put it Down
Poetry as I like it!
Never really put this book up!
With Piercy and soul-sisters, women are strong
Beautiful

The Moon Is Always Female
Marge Piercy
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

My Mother's Body
What Are Big Girls Made Of?: Poems
Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir
Colors Passing Through Us : Poems
Early Grrrl : The Early Poems of Marge Piercy

ASIN: 0394738594
Release Date: 1980-03-12

Book Description

Her seventh and most wide ranging collection. In the 1st of 2 sections, the poems move from the amusingly elegiac to the erotic, the classical to the funny. The 2nd section is a series of 15 poems for a calendar based on lunar rather than solar divisions

Customer Reviews:

Picked it up and Never Put it Down.......2004-06-06

My copy is the one dog-eared, worn volume always where I can find it on the bookshelf. Usually poetry volumes contain some winners and some losers, but I've read every poem cover to cover repeatedly, had favorites, sent copies to women who inspired me, and loved my copy in some rough times. Piercy's poems raise the bar for what women can be in poetry- hers are real- warts and all. And nevertheless, her first-person poetry makes those flaws both recognizable and even at times endearing. The tragedies are laced with revelation, the lovers are never perfect, and even Piercy's piece devoted to lost luggage evokes those little moments which become laughable and yet epic in their betrayal.

Poetry as I like it!.......2004-03-18

I like poetry with imagery that resolves into a shift in vantage point; this is something of which Marge Piercy is a master. The poems are in some aspects raw and gutsy, others are lyrical and meditative. I read "The Doughty Oaks" outloud to someone who also admired its tight imagery of a miser in rags, and the contradiction at the end of the poem. The last set of poems in the book are based on the Celtic Lunar calendar (in name only, this isn't Wicca) as a way for Piercy to celebrate the lunar calendar of the body and of the Jewish religion as well--whose festivals fall on lunar dates and account for our shifting Easter holiday. Well worth reading if you like poetry. This is one book I will be pulling off the shelf from time to time, to find new aspects of meaning.

Never really put this book up!.......2003-06-12

I bought this book about 18 years ago. For a little while it was on the shelf after I first read the poems. Then it came down. It's been unshelved for casual reading most of the remaining years. There are witty funny silly poems here. There are deep poems. There are honest revelations of different aspects of life. There are deep penetration into the nuts and bolts of love, into the politics of men and women. There are tears and laughter. There are mirrors to see and shar eyour own life and known you aren't alone, and neither is Marge.
Hope you can get the joy, the understandingt, the laughter and the humanity I got when I bought this book so long ago!

With Piercy and soul-sisters, women are strong.......2003-01-21

And not only that, but they are powerful and smelly and they MAKE MISTAKES. There is nothing more empowering than finding out that making mistakes is alright, and that was the strongest message I got from this book when I read it at the tender age of 15. It changed my life, ensuring that I would grow to tell boys "NO", and that I would tell myself "YES", and more than that, that I would be able to forgive myself for both of those answers. "Cats Like Angels" and "For Strong Women" should be required reading for all women, and everyone who LOVES women.

Beautiful.......2002-04-27

Such lyrical, fluid, graphic poetry! Marge Piercy's work grabbed me and wouldn't put me down. I couldn't stop reading her poetry.

Authors:

Authors

Authors