Early Grrrl : The Early Poems of Marge Piercy
This collection of new poems and old favorites, some long out of print and many never collected in Piercy's previous books, is titled in homage to the 'Grrrl' phenomenon — a contemporary expression of the pride and passion of young women's lives exploding in books and zines, concerts, films, and the internet — which in its honesty, accessibility and humor is remarkably descriptive of Marge Piercy's early work.
Early Grrrl presents the bold and passionate ecological and political verse for which Piercy is well known alongside poems celebrating the sensual pleasures of gardening and cooking and sex; funny poems about cats and New Year's Eve and warring boom boxes; vulnerable poems in which a young working class woman from the Midwest takes stock of herself, the expectations others have of her and the limits of her world.
Moving backwards in time and punctuated by short biographical essays, the arrangement of these poems displays the formation of a woman, an artist and a unique vision in which the natural, the political and the spiritual worlds become one and the same. For longtime fans and those new to Piercy's early work — "Clear but subtle, full of gusto and wisdom, guts and delicacy." (The Boston Globe) — this collection of new poems and old favorites is an indispensable addition to the oeuvre of one of America's best-known and best-loved poets.
"Early Grrrl shows the skeptical eye how poets are born. This collection has many delights for Piercy fans . . . This is an important book. Many poems here are unpublished elsewhere. Many are indispensable works from one of America's most important poets."
— The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Piercy is a poet of womanhood and compassion, conscience and spirit, and her poems are as magnetic as mirrors: no one can resist them, and all, at least every woman, will catch a glimpse of themselves in their warm and dancing light … It is obvious from the bright, saucy and shrewd early poems collected in Early Grrrl that Piercy's gift … is the truth of both nature and nurture. Piercy has dedicated this collection of long-out-of-print and never-before-published works to the women of the vibrant Grrrl movement—a feisty form of feminist expression found in zines and music and on the web—because Piercy has been Grrrl long before Grrrl got its name.”
— Booklist
“A glance at Early Grrrl: The Early poems of Marge Piercy shows … the skeptical eye how a poet is born, how she evolves and how a bunch of broken lines goes from being a novelty to poetry. Piercy starts off being talented, but she ends being muscularly gifted. Her best poems are like finely wrought sculptures…with firm grasp of emotional nuance. They challenge and delight and move. This collection has many delights for Piercy fans. This is an important book.”
— The Chicago Tribune
“This writer likes to fly in the face of restraint, decorum and subtlety. [Early Grrrl] will be important to those who follow her work closely.”
— Library Journal
Early Grrl stands on its own as a collection of potent, forceful poems, but it is even sweeter to readers who will recognize in the adolescent Piercy the woman she became. What a thrill to watch as her signature themes , images and linguistic style take root.”
— Lillith
“Early Grrrl resonates with the same passionate themes as her later poetry: politics; gardening; the Holocaust; women; writing; love; cats; and resonates with the contemporary energy of grrrl zines, music and manifestoes.”
— Sojourner
Some poems from Early Grrrl:
The token woman
The token woman gleams like a gold molar in a toothless mouth.
The token woman arrives like a milk bottle on the stoop
coming full and departing emptied.
The token woman carries a bouquet of hothouse celery
and a stenographer’s pad; she will take
the minutes, perk the coffee, smile
like a plastic daisy and put out
the black cat of her sensuous anger
to howl on the fence all night.
A fertility god serves a season
then is ritually dismembered
yet the name, the function live on:
so she finds the shopping lists
of exiled women in her coat pockets.
The token woman stands in the Square of the Immaculate
Exception blessing pigeons from a blue pedestal.
The token woman falls like a melon seed
on the cement: why has she no star shaped yellow flowers?
The token woman is placed like a scarecrow
in the longhaired corn: her muscles are wooden.
Why does she ride into battle on a clothes horse?
The token woman is a sandbag plugging
the levee: shall the river
call her sister as the flood waters rage?
The token woman is a black Chicana fluent in Chinese
who has borne 1.2 babies
(not on the premises, no child care provided)
owns a Ph.D., will teach freshman English
for a decade and bleach your laundry
with tears, silent as a china egg.
Your department orders her from a taxidermist’s catalog
and she comes luxuriously stuffed with goosedown
able to double as sleeping
or punching bag.
Another woman can never join her,
but only replace her to become her
unless we make common cause,
unless she grows out, one finger of a hand,
the entering wedge, the runner
from the bed of rampant peppermint
as it invades the neat clipped turf
of the putting green.
I vow to sleep through it
I hate New Year’s Eve.
I remember the panic to have
something, anything to do,
some kind of date
animal, vegetable, mineral,
a giant walking carrot,
a boa constrictor, a ferret,v
an orangutan, a lump of coal.
I remember ringing apartment
bells on 114th Street
looking for a rumored party.
Parties with lab punch:
Mogen David, grapefruit juice
and lab alcohol, hangovers
guaranteed to anyone within
ten yards of the foaming punchbowl.
I wake the next morning
with my mouth full of mouse
turds and wood ashes.
I wake and remember
how I tried to demonstrate
the hula, my hips banging
like a misloaded washer,
how I necked with a toad.
I remember limp parties,
parties askew, everyone
straggling home with the wrong
mate, the false match.
Evenings endless and boring
as a bowling tournament
at the senior center.
Is it midnight yet?
Only nine thirty? Only
nine thirty-eight? At midnight
we will spill drinks on
each other’s clothes, kiss
the boors and bores we detest,
the new year like a white
tablecloth on which a drink
has already been spilled.
The correct method of worshipping cats
For her name is, She who must be petted.
For her name is, She who eats from the flowered plate.
For her name is, She who wants the door always opened.
For her name is, She who must sleep between your legs.
And he is called, He who must be played with until he drops.
He is called, He who can wail loudest of all.
He is called, He who eats also from your plate.
He is called, He who sleeps in the softest chair.
And they are known as eaters and rollers in catnip
Famous among the nations for resonant purring.
Feared among the mouse multitudes. The voles
and moles also do run from their shadow.
For they perform cossack dances at four a.m.
For they stick their faces in your face and meow.
For they sit on the computer monitor to monitor your work.
For they make you laugh with their silly acrobatics
but their dignity is that of the oldest gods.
Because of all this we are permitted to serve them.
We are the cat servants, some well trained and some ill,
and they give us nothing but love and trouble.
The meaningful exchange
The man talks
the woman listens.
The man is a teapot
with a dark green brew
of troubles.
He pours into the woman.
She carries his sorrows away
sloshing in her belly.
The man swings off lighter.
Sympathy quickens him.
He watches women pass.
He whistles.
The woman lumbers away.
Inside his troubles are
snaking up through her throat.
Her body curls delicately
about them, worrying, nudging
them into some new meaningful shape
squatting now at the center of her life.
How much lighter I feel,
the man says, ready
for business.
How heavy I feel, the woman
says: this must be I.