Review by Booklist Review
The answer to the question posed by the title of this substantial poetry collection is found in a poem of the same name, and it is pain: the pain of struggling to meet fashion's impossible criteria. Piercy has a lot to say about our mania for conformity, whether it comes to self-image or politics, and, as she has over the course of writing 12 earlier books of poetry and several novels, she considers these issues within the context of a culture that fears the body's appetites, cycles, and imperfections, especially when it comes to women. She writes, in "Trying Our Metal," that she likes silver "not just for the moony glint / but because it tarnishes," reminding readers of the inevitability of change. The demanding give-and-take of marriage interests her far more than mere infatuation; in "Salt in the Afternoon," for instance, she celebrates the eroticism of enduring love. Piercy's poems are straight-ahead and socially conscious, but they are also as bright and tangy as fresh berries. (Reviewed February 1, 1997)0679450653Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
As accessible and as crammed with experience as a novel, Piercy's 13th collection bears the effortlessly textured markings of a life lived fully. Featured are wryly confessional elegies for her disturbed, Vietnam vet brother ("Our conversations were conducted/ without a common language./ I gave you a foot. You handed me a balloon..."), the luminously sexual poems one expects from the author of The Moon Is Always Female and striking ruminations on marriage and middle age. At her best, Piercy blends a strange, elemental whimsy with powerful free verse to bring fresh examination to such subjects as dysfunctional families ("A pit lined with fur and barbed wire;/ roast chicken and plastique, warmth/ and bile, a kiss and a razor in the ribs,/ our family") and to her intuitive odes to wild creatures like garter snakes and grackles. Less fully felt are poems with a social conscience, like the title piece, which offers only the expected observations on women's slavery to beauty and fashion ("When will a woman/ cease to be made of pain?"), while cozily humorous gripes on mundanities like having to pay "the mortgage bird" seem more Erma Bombeck than poetic. But when Piercy raises her sights to more transcendent subject matter (like the shiveringly beautiful poem about love and light titled "The negative ion dance"), she engages a seer's sense of numinous detail. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
