Synthesis Response

       For almost all of Marge Piercy's works that I have read, she has written about body image and women. She grew up in a time that was hard for women to really flourish and do what they wished. Because of this, it had a huge impact on her poetry due to the suppression she experienced.
       Throughout poems such as Barbie Doll, we see that she is writing about body image. This is a main theme in  most of her poems.
       Marge Piercy's other main theme is suppression of women. In her time, as stated earlier, women were seen as inferior to men. Marge knew that this was very untrue, and that women had and still have potential to do great things. In 'The Friend', her friend is telling her that she must change her body image to be beautiful. Sadly, it is predicted that Marge's poems, mostly based on body image and suppression, were due to how she was treated as a child. In lengthier biographies that I read about her, it claimed that this is true. In others, they did not mention  anything like that.
       In general, I found that most of Piercy's writings were her own thoughts and feelings transformed onto paper. I really enjoyed reading them, but they got old after a while. Essentially, I did enjoy her writings.

Marge Piercy Speaking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu0xATnQOZM

Poetic Influence: Emily Dickenson

Emily Dickinson

Background:

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was a very influential American Poet, but not well known in her own time. She wrote tons of poetry, but actually never published a book contained with her works, they were anonymously published. For her time, she wrote very provocative poems about life, death, love, and the outside world.

2 POEMS:

SURGEONS must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit,—Life!

This poem, I thought was very similar to Marge Piercy’s own writings because both emphasize the idea that surgeons (or the people who have an emotional impact on others) must be careful. “Underneath their fine incisions” lays the idea of “life” itself. Life represents emotions and experiences that an individual encounters and feels. In Marge Piercy’s poems, she writes a lot about different experiences she’s had, most of which are negative. These experiences tend to mostly be about her childhood, body image, and negative thoughts on these. 

Poem 8: My Mother's Body (part 4) by Marge Piercy

My Mother's Body

4.

What is it we turn from, what is it we fear?
Did I truly think you could put me back inside?
Did I think I would fall into you as into a molten
furnace and be recast, that I would become you?

What did you fear in me, the child who wore
your hair, the woman who let that black hair
grow long as a banner of darkness, when you
a proper flapper wore yours cropped?

You pushed and you pulled on my rubbery
flesh, you kneaded me like a ball of dough.
Rise, rise, and then you pounded me flat.
Secretly the bones formed in the bread.

I became willful, private as a cat.
You never knew what alleys I had wandered.
You called me bad and I posed like a gutter
queen in a dress sewn of knives.

All I feared was being stuck in a box
with a lid. A good woman appeared to me
indistinguishable from a dead one
except that she worked all the time.

Your payday never came. Your dreams ran
with bright colors like Mexican cottons
that bled onto the drab sheets of the day
and would not bleach with scrubbing.

My dear, what you said was one thing
but what you sang was another, sweetly
subversive and dark as blackberries
and I became the daughter of your dream.

This body is your body, ashes now
and roses, but alive in my eyes, my breasts,
my throat, my thighs. You run in me
a tang of salt in the creek waters of my blood,

you sing in my mind like wine. What you
did not dare in your life you dare in mine.

Analysis

       There are 4 parts to this poem, but I chose this one to analyze. This poem is the last part of 'My Mother's Body', which is about how her and her mother had grown to have a deminished relationship. "Did I truely think you could put me back inside?" writes Marge Piercy. This line is the hurt she feels from her mother's mistreatment. She wonders if she would ever really "fall into [her] as into molten", like a mold of her mother.

       Clearly, she is very different from her mother. She has long flowing hair, which indicates that she was rather care-free, whereas her mother has "a propper flapper...cropped" haircut, indicating that her mother is a harsh person who demands neatness and conformity.

       Her mother has seemingly "kneaded [her] like a ball of dough" to try to make her into the perfect woman. Marge would "rise, rise, and then [be] pounded...flat" by her mother. This is an act of suppression on women, of which her mother helped.

       Eventually, Marge writes that she "became willful, private as a cat", due to her mother's mistreatment. She "feared...being stuck in a box with a lid", nowhere to go and nothing to do. She wanted a life more than just boring and what was set out for her/demanded by her mom.

       She also writes that her mother worked a lot, but her "payday never came", which means that a reward for her hardwork never really came. Her mom once had "dreams...with bright colors like Mexican cottons...[that] woul dnot bleach with scrubbing". Clearly, her mother was not the type of women she made herself out to be like. Her and her mother had the potential to get along and be very close, as they once were, but suppression got the best of the older woman.

       She writes, "my body is your body...you run in me a tang of salt in the creek waters of my blood". She emphasizes the idea that she and her mother are very similar people. The last line, "what you did not dare in your life you dare in mine" is my favorite part of this poem because Marge is saying that her and her mom are truely inseperable and similar people. But the mom clearly couldn't do what she wanted with her life, for the oppurtunity was never given to her. Marge would be the woman that her mother could never be.

Poem 7: The Morning Half-Life Blues by Marge Piercy

The Morning Half-Life Blues

Girls buck the wind in the grooves toward work
in fuzzy coats promised to be warm as fur.
The shop windows snicker
flashing them hurrying over dresses they cannot afford:
you are not pretty enough, not pretty enough.

Blown with yesterday’s papers through the boiled coffee morning
we dream of the stop on the subway without a name,
the door in the heart of the grove of skyscrapers,
that garden where we nestle to the teats of a furry world,
lie in mounds of peony eating grapes,
and need barter ourselves for nothing.
not by the hour, not by the pound, not by the skinful,
that party to which no one will give or sell us the key
though we have all thought briefly we found it
drunk or in bed.

Black girls with thin legs and high necks stalking like herons,
plump girls with blue legs and green eyelids and
strawberry breasts,
swept off to be frozen in fluorescent cubes,
the vacuum of your jobs sucks your brains dry
and fills you with the ooze of melted comics.
Living is later. This is your rented death.
You grasp at hard commodities and vague lusts
to make up, to pay for each day
which opens like a can and is empty, and then another,
afternoons like dinosaur eggs stuffed with glue.

Girls of the dirty morning, ticketed and spent,
you will be less at forty than at twenty.
Your living is a waste product of somebody’s mill.
I would fix you like buds to a city where people work
to make and do things necessary and good,
where work is real as bread and babies and trees in parks
where we would all blossom slowly and ripen to sound fruit.

Analysis

       Marge Piercy starts off thsi poem with the description of working women who look dreaminly into shop windows over "dresses they cannot afford". The last line in the stanza emphasizes suppression of women, as someone in their heads is saying "you are not prety enough, not pretty enough" to buy the dresses.

       In the second stanza, Piercy writes about a "dream...stop on on the subway", which serves as a getaway for the women. She says "we", so clearly she is a part of the desire for a better life. To counteract this, she describes the "heart of the grove of skyscrapers...[a] garden where we nestle to the teats of a furry world". This asthetic line proves to be a pleasent one in which the reader can enjoy.

       The third stanza offers more suppression as she describes unique women being "swept off to be frozen in fluorescent cubes", meaning that they have ben condemned to a live of a conformist job. The "vacuum of your jobs sucks your brains dry", which is a hyperbole furthmore explaining that these jobs are bad for women, that their brains will be like "melted comics"; filled with nonsense. Further into the stanza, she describes how a "rented death" serves as a boring job that these women are to have. Each day "opens like a can and is emptpy" and contines on to be like this, day after day. There will be nothing new and exciting for these women to look forward to.

       In the last stanza, Marge Piercy writes that these women will "be less at forty than at twenty" because their lives have been spent working for nothing. The suppression of women back when she was growing up was so bad that even if they did have jobs, they would feel like the women in this poem do. Hence, the "half-life blues". However, she hints that she is different from the women she describes in the poem. She says, "I would fix you like buds to a city where people work to make and do things necessary and good...where we would all blossom and slowly ripen to sound fruit." This line gives a sense of hope because she, too, has been in the position of a suppressed woman. She wants nothing more but a better life for hersef and others.

Poem 6: Traveling Dream by Marge Piercy

TRAVELING DREAM

I am packing to go to the airport but somehow I am never packed. I keep remembering more things I keep forgetting. Secretly the clock is bolting forward ten minutes at a click instead of one. Each time I look away, it jumps. Now I remember I have to find the cats. I have four cats even when I am asleep. One is on the bed and I slip  her into the suitcase. One is under the sofa. I drag him out. But the tabby in the suitcase has vanished. Now my tickets have run away. Maybe the cat has my tickets. I can only find one cat. My purse has gone into hiding. Now it is time to get packed. I take the suitcase down. There is a cat in it but no clothes. My tickets are floating in the bath tub full of water. I dry them. One cat is in my purse but my wallet has dissolved. The tickets are still dripping. I look at the clock as it leaps forward and see I have missed my plane. My bed is gone now. There is one cat the size of a sofa.  Analysis        In the first stanza, Piercy writes that she is "packing to go to the airport", like she is making big plans. But these plans never work, as she is "somehow...never packed". She continues on into the second stanza saying that time is "bolting forward".For her, time is passing too quickly, and she seemingly does just does not have enough of it.        She "jumps" into the third stanza, as if she is jumping to a different thought, which highlights the correlation between the word "jump" as used in the poem, and her thought process. Also, in this third stanza, she talks about 4 different types of cats. I wasn't sure exactly what she meant by these different cats, but, she does say "I have four cats even when I am asleep", which makes me think that in the narrator's point of view, this person has 4 different types of personalities perhaps? She writes more, the emphasize the 4 personalities when the "tabby in the suitcase has vanished". Sometimes, these personalities tend to disappear.        She continues on into the 5th stanza, writing "now my tickets have run away. maybe the cat has my tickets. I can only find one cat". Throughout this poem, she continues to lose track of where things are.        She delves more into the fact that she needs to get packed, but she can't seem to find her clothes. She claims that her "tickets are floating in the bath". The ticket seems like a source of freedom for her, because the ticket will bring her to the airport in which she will be able to fly away from where she currently is. Since the tickets are floating in the bath, her freedom has been diminished.        In the next stanza, she continues to write that the cats are every where, one including "in [her] purse", and that the "tickets are still dripping". The distractions have served is a disablement to her.          In the final stanza, she notices that time has passed. "...the clock...leaps forward and [she sees she has] missed [the] plane". The distractions from the cats have taken her off the path of success, which was to leave where she currently is. The last line, "there is one cat the size of a sofa" emphasizes a hyperbole that has gotten in the way of the desire to leave.

Poem 5: A Work of Artifice by Marge Piercy

A WORK OF ARTIFICE

The bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain till split by lightning. But a gardener carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he whittles back the branches the gardener croons, It is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in. With living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch.  Analysis        In this poem, I took it to be that the 'bonsai tree' was actually a woman. They live in the 'attractive pot', which would be a nice home. Marge Piercy writes, that the bonsai tree "could have grown eighty feet tall" which was its potential. If it had not been suppressed so much by the gardener, then it would be more than nine inches on height. The gardener is a man who has suppressed a woman, and because of that, she can no longer grow, for her personality has been severely diminished.        The 'gardener' (man) tells her that she must be "small and cozy, domestic and weak" and continues to tell her "how lucky [she is] to have a pot (house) to grow in". By saying this, the woman/bonsai tree is being severely suppressed by the man/gardener because he is telling her that she has to act a certain way. She must take care of domestic activities and tasks, which depresses her. She writes that "one must begin very early to dwarf [a woman's] growth" in the way that she has been dwarfed.