One of my favorite poets of all time is a contemporary – Marge Piercy. She is also a novelist, and the author of one of my favorite Utopias (and you know how much I love Utopias), Woman on the Edge of Time.
So I just finished lingering over her My Mother’s Body, published in 1985, and given to me as a Christmas gift by a friend in 2002. I am amazed that I hadn’t read it before, but somehow it escaped into the bookshelves before being savored.
The poems are many about her fresh and new marriage to her husband, Ira Wood, the chuppah at their wedding, their life (and sex) together. He contributed two poems.
She is a Jewish and feminist writer, and is also in love with the body. The Wine, in this volume, is very expressive of her physical-ness, and love of texture, pulsation, feeling. Her poems on food are the same way – giving us the smells, the touch, the toothiness of food, so that we can feel it with her. Many yummy lines in these poems.
Lots of favorite poems in here, particularly in the section Underrated Pleasures. But perhaps – just perhaps, because I love almost all of them – Does the Light Fail Us, or Do We Fail the Light? might be my favorite.
If you want to feel poetry, this book will work for you!