Non-Fiction
In this candid and intimate collection of essays, poems, memoirs, reviews, rants, and railleries, Piercy discusses her own development as a working-class feminist, the highs and lows of TV culture, the ego-dances of a writer’s life, the homeless and the housewife, Allen Ginsberg and Marilyn Monroe, feminist utopias (and why she doesn’t live in one), why fiction isn’t physics; and of course, fame, sex, and money, not necessarily in that order. The short essays, poems, and personal memoirs intermingle like shards of glass that shine, reflect—and cut. Always personal yet always political, Piercy’s work is drawn from a deep well of feminist and political activism.
Also featured is the Outspoken Interview, in which the author lays out her personal rules for living on Cape Cod, finding your poetic voice, and making friends in Cuba.
The long-awaited second edition of the critically acclaimed writing lecture and sourcebook based on the workshops that Piercy has given (with her husband, the publisher Ira Wood) around the country at universities and such venues as the Esalen and Omega Institutes.
Marge Piercy & Ira Wood
The “Best Book of the Year” for Writers Selection
—The Writer Magazine
In a Revised New Edition, Bigger and Better Than Ever
Every year, Marge Piercy, beloved poet and novelist, has been making her own Passover seder with a group of family and friends. Over the years, babies have been born and grown up, friends move and divorce, but over time the principals gather in her rustic Cape Cod home to participate in a seder that Piercy takes joy in refreshing with the object above all to create meaning. Making her way through the ritual one item and one practice at a time, she coaxes us toward “a significant contemporary interpretation, rather than an emphasis on what is strictly ‘correct’ or traditional.” She discusses her grandmother, who thought herself unworthy to lead a seder because of her limited Hebrew, but presided “morally” at the table; she explores the reasons that some Jews add an orange to their seder plate; she even describes her heroic efforts to make her own Gefilte fish (an experiment not to be repeated). Along the way, Piercy offers her distinct slant on each element of the feast and its symbols, and dozens of her own wonderful recipes. “Food sometimes feels like emotion made edible,” she writes, and her recipes are delivered in the same warm and commanding voice as her poems and prose: “When I told Ira that I was going to explain how to cook matzah brei, he thought I was crazy. Everybody knows how to make matzah brie, he said. But I am of the opinion that there is no longer anything that everybody knows how to cook.”
Marge Piercy, a writer who is highly praised as both a poet and a novelist, turns her gaze inward as she shares her thoughts on life and explores her development as a woman and writer. 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.
In this moving and generous memoir, Marge Piercy shares her perspectives on life and explores her development as a woman and a writer. Throughout, she revisits the people, circumstances, and actions that shaped her experiences and inspired her writing and political work as well her many love affairs and friendships. And, she pays tribute to the one loving constant that offered her comfort and meaning even as the faces and events in her life changed: her beloved cats.
With searing honesty Piercy tells of her strained childhood growing up poor in a religously split working-class family in Detroit. She examines her myriad friendships and relationships, including two painful early marriages, and reveals the 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 thoughts on aging, poetry, the writing life, social action, sexuality, spirituality, religion, and finding a lasting and improbable love with a man fourteen years younger than herself.
Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt
“…In writing the poet sometimes transcends the daily self into something clearer. I have often had the experience of looking up from the typewriter, the page, and feeling complete blankness about who I am – the minutia of my daily life, where I am, why. I have for a moment no sex, no history, no character . . . . I respect that self, that artisan who feels empty of personal concern when dealing with the stuff of my intimate life.”
- Marge Piercy