A Woman Made of Pain? The Life and Work of Poet Marge Piercy July 6, 2008

A Woman Made of Pain?

The Life and Work of Poet Marge Piercy

“The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.” – Marge Piercy

            Only minimal research is required to affirm that Marge Piercy means what she says. She is definitely a “real writer” who feels it is more important to write than to be accepted. She has written about everything from her anti-war stance to her cats. Nothing is off limits, no matter how unpopular the subject or, her opinion, might be. Piercy has been involved with political activism most of her life and it comes out in her writing. Marge Piercy is a controversial as well as an acclaimed poet whose writing reflects her strong viewpoints.

            Born March 31, 1936 in Detroit, Michigan, Marge Piercy was born into a family greatly affected by the Great Depression – just like most families in the 1930’s. With little to no work, the family struggled to make ends meet. After being out of work for a while, Piercy’s father, Robert Douglas Piercy, eventually found work at Westinghouse installing and repairing heavy machinery. Her mother, Beatrice Bunnin, is who Piercy attributes to her becoming a poet. Her mother was a creative, if not eccentric, woman who told great stories and held many superstitions. By the time Piercy turned seventeen, it seems the two had become too much alike. They fought constantly, so she moved out of the house. The two did not truly reconnect until late in her mother’s life. Piercy’s maternal grandfather was a union organizer who was murdered for being just that. Her maternal grandmother told stories, just like Piercy’s mother. Her mother and grandmother raised Piercy in the Jewish faith and she remains faithful to the religion to this day. Although Piercy had one half-brother fourteen years her elder, not much is known about him.

            Piercy’s early childhood was “normal” and happy, according to the poet. But while still in elementary school, she developed, and nearly died from, the German measles and rheumatic fever. The illness wreaked havoc on her body, turning her from a healthy, beautiful girl into a fainting, anorexic-looking child with blue skin. The positive effect of the affliction was the time it gave Piercy to immerse herself in books and reading – in addition to the time it gave her with her beloved cats. Thankfully, Piercy recovered from her illnesses and at seventeen, she won a scholarship to the University of Michigan, making her the first person in her family to attend college.

            Although Piercy excelled at taking tests and she yearned for knowledge, she did not feel as though she fit in. She felt outcast because she did not fit the mold of the typical 1950’s young woman. She was not a prude when it came to her sexuality and she had ambition that only males were supposed to have. In her senior year, she did not have to work and after graduation, she was able to take a trip to France because she won multiple Hopwood awards for her writing. Piercy’s education (in the “school sense”, at least) ended with a fellowship and Masters degree from Northwestern.

            Immediately after college, Piercy had a life full of ups and downs. It was on her Hopwood award trip to France that Piercy met her first husband. He was a Jewish particle physicist who shared Piercy’s passion for political activism; he was active in the opposition to the Algerian war that was taking place at the time. Their marriage ended because, according to Piercy, he did not take her writing seriously and his ideas of gender roles were apparently straight out of a 1950’s sitcom. Piercy moved to Chicago once her first marriage ended and began some of the most difficult years of her life. She had virtually no money, going from part-time job to part-time job – secretary, department store clerk, artists’ model, switchboard operator, and faculty instructor. She was a divorcee, had no money or steady job, and was unable to get her work published. All of this by the age of twenty-three; needless to say, she felt like a like a loser, a has-been. In 1962, at the age of 26, Piercy married once again. Her second husband was a man of science like her first – this time, a computer scientist. They had what some might call a “hippie marriage” – open and fluid, with other people living with them sporadically. Their marriage was often bipolar – the highs were very high, while the lows were extremely low.

During this second marriage, Piercy’s life was full. She made political activism her main focus. She was involved with the VOICE chapter in Ann Arbor as well as SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). She wrote in her off time from her political work. She helped to found NACLA and started an MDS (Movement for a Democratic Society) chapter in Brooklyn. Eventually, she and her husband left New York. Piercy’s health was deteriorating and they were becoming frustrated with the political movement community in the area. The community was divided and their actions did not seem to be doing anything to stop the Vietnam War. And, while Piercy was busy with writing and organizing political groups, her husband was alone and feeling abandoned.

Piercy and her husband finally moved from New York to Cape Cod in 1971. The Cape seemed to do her wonders. She began gardening. She regained her health and she was practically bursting at the seams with creativity. Her writing flourished. Unfortunately, the Cape did not seem to be doing the same for her husband. He again, was feeling alienated. Although the marriage had been deteriorating for years, it officially ended in 1976. Today, Piercy and her husband since 1982, Ira Wood, still live in Cape Cod and are enjoying their life there with their four cats. They have written plays together, written and published novels together, and even founded Leapfrog Press in 1997.

Marge Piercy has written novels, poetry, and plays; received many awards and honors; and has given readings, conducted workshops, and lectured at hundreds of institutions. Her books of poetry included Colors Passing Through Us (2003), The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (1999), Early Grrrl: The Early Poems of Marge Piercy (1999), What Are Good Girls Made Of? (1997), Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (1982), and The Moon is Always Female (1980). Some of her novels include Three Women (1999), Storm Tide (with Ira Wood, 1998), City of Darkness, City of Light (1996), The Longings of Women (1994), and He, She and It (1991). She received the Patterson Poetry Prize for Best Book of the Year in 1999, the Barbara Bradley Award from the New England Poetry Club in 1992, the Sheaffer-PEN/New England Award for Literary Excellence, and the National Endowment for the Arts award, among others. Just a small sampling of the almost four-hundred institutions Piercy has spoken at include the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Academy of American Poets, the Holocaust Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., the Poetry Society of America, City University of London, New England Poetry Club, Open University in Bletchley, England, and Stanford University. In addition, Ms. Piercy has received honorary doctorate degrees from Eastern Connecticut State University, Hebrew Union College, Lesley College, and Bridgewater State College.

Piercy belongs to many organizations and donates and raises money for groups that share her passions and beliefs. She is a member of the Authors Guild, the Authors League, PEN, the Poetry Society of America, the National Writers Union, and the New England Poetry Club. The organizations that receive her financial support include, but are certainly not limited to, Sojourner, The Boston and San Francisco Rape Crisis Centers, the Feminist Writer’s Guild, the Women’s Bail Fund, Transition House, The Second Wave, State and Mind, Mass Choice, and the Fine Arts Work Center.

Marge Piercy’s poem, What Are Big Girls Made Of?  is a condemnation of the unattainable expectations placed upon women – not only today, but women throughout history. In her denunciation, she tells about a woman she once knew during her college days, Cecile. Cecile was “perfection” – thin, but curved in all the right places, dark red lipsticked lips. Years later, she met up with her again in 1968. Cecile was still stuck in college, while Marge had apparently blossomed. Cecile was now washed up and out of style and “out of the game”, leaving Marge with feelings of newfound superiority over her lackluster old friend. Next, Piercy focuses on the draconian fashions of the 18^th Century – corsets that flatten the natural curve of the stomach, hips and breasts erupting out of either end, and hair like a monument, towering above the head. This painful description is moved to yet another painful description of the modern woman. Contemporary women, she says exercise themselves until they reach death camp measurements, their stomachs emitting a constant growl. Animals, she explains, fall in love all the time, just by sniffing and licking each other, without the need of a nip or a tuck. Piercy asks the reader to explain why humans cannot just love each other as we are – naturally. Is having a large rear really the end of the world? Is it worse than being an immoral person? Why does a woman have to endure pain to be accepted by others? When asked in an interview about how things have changed for women, Piercy said the following:

 

One way in which things have not improved is body image. The standard required body image for women to achieve or maintain is impossible for 90 percent of the population. The media is so powerful that they are constantly pushing the image of these perfect, skinny blond women which doesn’t correspond to the genes, body structure, or health requirements of most women. And this matters a lot because women are always comparing themselves to these media images. Just about every woman we know is dissatisfied with their body and feels inferior. This is insane. It’s gotten much, much, much, much worse.

 

It is obvious from her political activism, the groups she supports, and her writing that Marge Piercy is a far left liberal. She is a self-proclaimed feminist, environmentalist, and Marxist. Others may not share her beliefs – and that is okay with her. When asked, “In a time like this, what makes poetry, fiction, personal narrative, art of all kinds important?”, Piercy answered in part, “Because no matter how active you are, you have to know why, you have to know who you are, you have to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. You have to know what you believe in. You need affirmation of the parts of you that the media doesn’t affirm – the core of you. That’s mostly poetry.” To Marge Piercy, it is all about expressing yourself and trying to make a difference in the world by whatever means one is able, whether it is by expressing yourself through writing or involvement with political groups. “Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.” – Marge Piercy

 

Alliteration       Assonance       Metaphor/Simile          Repetition        Personification

What Are Big Girls Made Of?

The construction of a woman: a woman is not made of flesh of bone and sinew belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe. She is manufactured like a sports sedan. She is retooled, refitted and redesigned every decade. Cecile had been seduction itself in college. She wriggled through bars like a satin eel, her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed in the dark red lipstick of desire.She visited in ‘68 still wearing skirts tight to the knees, dark red lipstick, while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt, lipstick pale as apricot milk, hair loose as a horse’s mane. Oh dear, I thought in my superiority of the moment, whatever has happened to poor Cecile? She was out of fashion, out of the game, disqualified, disdained, dis- membered from the club of desire.Look at pictures in French fashion magazines of the 18th century: century of the ultimate lady fantasy wrought of silk and corseting. Paniers bring her hips out three feet each way, while the waist is pinched and the belly flattened under wood. The breasts are stuffed up and out offered like apples in a bowl. The tiny foot is encased in a slipper never meant for walking. On top is a grandiose headache: hair like a museum piece, daily ornamented with ribbons, vases, grottoes, mountains, frigates in full sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy of a hairdresser turned loose. The hats were rococo wedding cakes                   ß—- (metaphor only – not simile) that would dim the Las Vegas strip. Here is a woman forced into shape rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh: a woman made of pain. How superior we are now: see the modern woman thin as a blade of scissors. She runs on a treadmill every morning, fits herself into machines of weights and pulleys to heave and grunt, an image in her mind she can never approximate, a body of rosy glass that never wrinkles, never grows, never fades. She sits at the table closing her eyes to food hungry, always hungry: a woman made of pain. A cat or dog approaches another, they sniff noses. They sniff asses. They bristle or lick. They fall                     ß——— Do animals actually fall in love – passionately?? in love as often as we do, as passionately. But they fall in love or lust with furry flesh, not hoop skirts or push up bras rib removal or liposuction. It is not for male or female dogs that poodles are clipped to topiary hedges. If only we could like each other raw. If only we could love ourselves like healthy babies burbling in our arms. If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed to need what is sold us. Why should we want to live inside ads? Why should we want to scourge our softness to straight lines like a Mondrian painting? Why should we punish each other with scorn as if to have a large ass were worse than being greedy or mean? When will women not be compelled to view their bodies as science projects, gardens to be weeded, dogs to be trained? When will a woman cease to be made of pain? Marge Piercy

 

 References

Piercy, Marge. (2005). Marge Piercy Resume. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from the Marge Piercy website: http://www.margepiercy.com/main-pages/resume.htm.

McManus, Terry. (2005). Marge Piercy – Biography. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from the Marge Piercy website: http://www.margepiercy.com/main-pages/biography.htm.

Rodriguez, Johnette. (September 27, 2002). Fighting Words: Marge Piercy’s Powerful Poetry and Prose. The Providence Phoenix. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from the Marge Piercy website: http://www.margepiercy.com/interviews/fighting-words.htm.

Marge Piercy. (2007). Retrieved April 19, 2007 from The Academy of American Poets’ website: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/266.

Templin, Charlotte. (May 2004). An Interview with Marge Piercy. The Writer’s Chronicle, 36(6).Retrieved April 19, 2007 from the Marge Piercy website: http://www.margepiercy.com/interviews/writers-chron-interview.htm.