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The poems in the second section, "Slides,” issue directly from the author's research while writing her most recent novel, GONE TO SOLDIERS, set during World War II. These poems include evocations of the French and English country sides as well as of the battles and suffering that the war brought to them. The section entitled "Country Pleasures" is composed of the love poetry and nature poetry for which the author is as well known and admired as she is for her feminist poems. “Candle in a Glass" is a section of poems to and for the dead, including the long, powerfully emotional "Burial by salt” the author's attempt to come to some terms of peace with her father ("I search now through the ashes of my old pain / to find something to praise"). Finally, in "The Ram's Horn,” the author gives us poems that speak of one particular kind of light: the light that religion - and, in particular, Judaism - sheds on an examined life. Some of these poems have been used as part of Reconstructionist and Reform services, and "Maggid" (a poem that honors those who "let go of every- / thing but freedom, who ran, who revolted, who fought, / who became other by saving themselves") has begun to be used in Haggadahs. AVAILABLE LIGHT is one of the strongest and most compelling books of
poems that we have had from Marge Piercy.
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| Copyright 2005 Marge Piercy | ||||||||
