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Marge Piercy
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The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010 Kindle Edition

by Marge Piercy (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 24 ratings
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This new gathering of Marge Piercy’s poems—energetic, funny, political, full of vitality—brings us the heart of her mature work, the first selected since Circles on the Water in 1982.

Here are poems that chart the milestone events and fierce passions of her middle years: the death of her mother, whom we meet first as a young woman, “awkwardly lovely, her face / pure as a single trill perfectly / prolonged on a violin,” and again as an older woman musing on what the afterlife may hold for her. There is a new marriage which she celebrates not only for romantic beginnings but also for the more intimate details that emerge over time: “love cherishes too the backpockets, / the pencil ends of childhood fears.”

Some poems convey her long-held, never-wavering political convictions, which she declares in language unmistakably and colorfully her own, as when she encourages her feminist readers to go to the opera instead of the movies because at least there the heroine is real, “fifty and weighs as much as a ’65 Chevy with fins.”

Living out to sea on Cape Cod settles her into the rhythm of seasons and provides poems of planting and harvests, odes to tomatoes and roses, tributes to the power and freedom of whales. And in these years she rediscovers her Jewish heritage, celebrating holidays and making of them something new and original.

She begins to examine her own legacy:
I have worn the faces, the masks
of hieroglyphs, gods and demons,
bat faced ghosts, sibyls and thieves,
lover, loser, red rose and ragweed,
these are the tracks I have left
on the white crust of time.
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  1. Print length
    354 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Knopf
  5. Publication date
    March 8, 2011
  6. File size
    3522 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

MARGE PIERCY is the author of eighteen collections of poetry; a memoir, Sleeping with Cats; and seventeen novels, most recently Sex Wars. Her work has been translated into nineteen languages. In 1990 she won the Golden Rose, the oldest poetry award in the country. With her husband, the novelist Ira Wood, she has written a play, a novel, and most recently the second edition of So You Want to Write: How to Master the Craft of Fiction and Memoir.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004FEFS2M
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf (March 8, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 8, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3522 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 354 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 24 ratings

About the author

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Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy

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Marge Piercy has written seventeen novels including the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, the national bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women, and the classic Woman on the Edge of Time, as well as He, She and It and Sex Wars; nineteen volumes of poetry including The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems 1980–2010, The Crooked Inheritance, and Made in Detroit; and the critically acclaimed memoir Sleeping with Cats. Born in center city Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern, and the recipient of four honorary doctorates, Piercy is active in antiwar, feminist, and environmental causes.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
24 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Taylor
5.0 out of 5 stars A Feminist Who Cooks and then some!
Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2019
Verified Purchase
Piercy is one of my favorite poets and feminists. Her title poem, “The Hunger Moon,” is the perfect poem for all seasons in nature and in life. “The snow is frozen moonlight on the marshes,” “Spring, I watch the moon for instruction” “The hunger moon is grinning like a skull,” are just a few metaphorical lines that speak to the end of winter, the promises of springs.

What awaits the reader? Pages after page of life’s seasons, changes, paradoxes and questions. Is it ever enough to ask why? Is it ever enough to hope? It is ever enough to have been born, to have lived or to have died?

“The force of what has happened
flattens us to old rugs

on which the pattern is only
Memory and their use is past.”

If you are a reader looking for answers, Piercy has some. But the questions? Ah, that is the tasty part. Piercy has planted a crop of poems worth the harvest. You will leave full knowing there is always room for one bite more.
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Alice J.
5.0 out of 5 stars The Hunger Moon
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2011
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Where have I been that I have missed the work of Marge Piercy? I was snagged by the appearance of "The Tao of Touch" on an internet Almanac and HAD to buy the book. Piercy spans a wide spectrum of emotions and attitudes in this book of poetry. There is such sensitivity to the powers of touch in one poem, diatribes against social and political injustice in others. She conjures up a revolution in America's kitchens with " What's that smell in the kitchen?", an absolute hoot. Can't wait to share this book with my friends.
7 people found this helpful
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Marcymom
4.0 out of 5 stars Just one flaw
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2013
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The book arrived with a red ink spot on the bottom of the book and that is the only reason i didn't give it five stars. If it had been for a gift I would have needed to return it. The book itself is a fabulous collection of fabulous Piercy.
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Jennifer Robinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Marge Piercy is a Fierce Force of Nature
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2015
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I love Marge Piercy and highly recommend any person who loves poetry, or who is a feminist thinker, read her books. She is amazing. That is all I need to say.
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JP
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2017
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Loving it.
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Kate Turner
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2015
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Wonderful!
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Patricia Kramer
5.0 out of 5 stars Buttons and Eve
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2011
This is a diverse collection of Marge Piercy's poems that tell it like it is. I didn't relate to every poem, but many of them stopped me in my tracks.

I love the poem about a collection of buttons in a tin. Just like the ones I have from my grandmothers sewing machine.

Unbuttoning

I carried them from my mother's
sewing table, a wise legacy
not only practical but better
able than fading snapshots
to conjure buried seasons.

Apple sauce for Eve

Those old daddies cursed you and us in you,
damned for your curiosity:for your sin
was wanting knowledge. To try, to taste,
to take into the body, into the brain
and turn each thing, each sign, each factoid
round and round as new facets glint and white
fractures into colors and the image breaks
into crystal fragments that pierce the nerves
while the brain casts the chips into patterns.

Each experiment sticks a finger deep in the pie
dares existence, blows a horn in the ear
of belief, lets the nasty and difficult brats
of real questions into the still air
of the desiccated parlor of stasis.
What we all know to be true, constant,
melts like frost landscapes on a window
in a jet of steam. How many last words
in how many dead languages would translate into,
But what happens if I, and Whoops!

I bought copies of this book as gifts for two women who I hope will also be moved and challenged by this work of poetry.
2 people found this helpful
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Sharon B Dearborn
4.0 out of 5 stars Old and new
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2012
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I really enjoy reading the old poems and finding the new ones. When I only have a bit of time to read, this is a great book to just pick up and flip to a poem by chance.
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Top reviews from other countries

Bee Durban
5.0 out of 5 stars Fierce, Tender, Thought-provoking, Beautiful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 11, 2023
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Five stars, plus five thousand! I love Marge Piercy's poems of cats, protest, self-awareness, death and family, the minutiae of everyday life. Her poems grounded in Judaism are particularly beautiful and I learn so much from them.

Not always easy to read; uncomfortable and provoking, funny and self-revealing. Marge Piercy is a wonder.
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Bruce Meyer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great poems!
Reviewed in Canada on April 11, 2018
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Every poem is a tremendous delight and a real gift. Thank you Marge Piercy.
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P and J Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful anthology
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2014
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I bought this anthology because I loved the poem "to be of use" - which is quite well known and is in quite a few general anthologies. Marge Piercy's poems are so accessible and varied - a real treat.
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