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MARGE PIERCY
"When I first found poetry that spoke to me -- a street kid from Detroit, from a poor family -- it was validation that I wasn't crazy, wasn't bizarre, wasn't totally nutty. There were other people who felt the way I felt."
Marge Piercy was born in a working-class family in Detroit and attended the University of Michigan on scholarship. She is the author of fifteen volumes of poetry and sixteen novels, in genre as diverse as historical fiction, science fiction, contemporary thrillers, and family sagas. Her themes encompass social justice for men and women, nature and spirituality, especially the "lunar side" of Judaism.
"The chuppah"
The chuppah stands on four poles.
The home has its four corners.
The chuppah stands on four poles.
The marriage stands on four legs.
Four points loose the winds
that blow on the walls of the house,
the south wind that brings the warm rain,
the east wind that brings the cold rain,
the north wind that brings the cold sun
and the snow, the long west wind
bringing the weather off the far plains.
Here we live open to the seasons.
Here the winds caress and cuff us
contrary and fierce as bears.
Here the winds are caught and snarling
in the pines, a cat in a net clawing
breaking twigs to fight loose.
Here the winds brush our faces
soft in the morning as feathers
that float down from a dove's breast.
Here the moon sails up out of the ocean
dripping like a just washed apple.
Here the sun wakes us like a baby.
Therefore the chuppah has no sides.
It is not a box.
It is not a coffin.
It is not a dead end.
Therefore the chuppah has no walls.
We have made a home together
open to the weather of our time.
We are mills that turn in the winds of struggle
converting fierce energy into bread.
The canopy is the cloth of our table
where we share fruit and vegetables
of our labor, where our care for the earth
comes back and we take its body in ours.
The canopy is the cover of our bed
where our bodies open their portals wide,
where we eat and drink the blood
of our love, where the skin shines red
as a swallowed sunrise and we burn
in one furnace of joy molten as steel
and the dream is flesh and flower.
O my love O my love we dance
under the chuppah standing over us
like an animal on its four legs,
like a table on which we set our love
as a feast, like a tent
under which we work
not safe but no longer solitary
in the searing heat of our time.
from "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.
...
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
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.
...
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?
"Why should we want to live inside ads?"
Questions
1. A chuppah is a canopy held up by four people in a Jewish wedding. Tradition calls for the bride and groom to stand under the chuppah during the ceremony. How does Piercy use the chuppah as a symbol in her poem? Why do you think traditions and symbols are important to a culture?
2. Near the end of "What are big girls made of?" Marge Piercy writes, "If only we could like each other raw. / If only we could love ourselves / like healthy babies burbling in our arms." What messages do you think society gives teenagers about how they should look? What happens to people who take those messages too seriously?
Activities
1. A chuppah is a physical object that has symbolic meanings. Choose a physical object you find interesting -- it could be something unique to your culture, or it could be a personal item. Describe how that object has meaning in your experience or in someone else's experience.
2. Marge Piercy says, "Observing the contradictions of my mother's life taught me a lot about women's lives." What life have you observed closely? What has it taught you? In writing, dance, or illustration, express what you've learned.
3. Research a particular style of clothing or a particular idea about beauty in history or in other cultures. What do you think that style or idea implies about the way people thought of themselves? How was the style or idea different for men and for women? Share your findings in any format you like.
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