The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme [Paperback]

Marge Piercy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 19, 2000

Winner of the 2000 Paterson Poetry Prize

About Marge Piercy's collection of her old and new poems that celebrate the Jewish experience, the poet Lyn Lifshin writes: "The Art of Blessing the Day is an exquisite book. The whole collection is strong, passionate, and poignant, but the mother and daughter poems, fierce and emotional, with their intense ambivalence, pain and joy, themes of separation and reconnecting, are among the very strongest about that difficult relationship.

"These striking, original, beautifully sensuous poems do just that. Ordinary moments--a sunset, a walk, a private religious ritual--are so alive in poems like 'Shabbat moment'  and 'Rosh Hodesh.' In the same way that she celebrates ordinary moments, small things become charged with memories and feelings: paper snowflakes, buttons, one bird, a bottle-cap flower made from a ginger ale top and crystal beads.

"She celebrates the body in rollicking, gusto-filled poems like 'Belly good' and 'The chuppah,' where 'our bodies open their portals wide.' So much that is richly sensuous: 'hands that caressed you,  . . . untied the knot of pleasure and loosened your flesh till it fluttered,' and lush praise for 'life in our spines, our throats,  our knees, our genitals, our brains, our tongues.'

"I love the humor in poems like 'Eat fruit,' the nostalgia and joy in 'The rabbi's granddaughter and the Christmas tree,' the fresh, beautiful images of nature--'In winter . . .the sun hangs its wizened rosehip in the oaks.'

"I admire Piercy's sense of the past alive in the present, in personal and social history. The poems are memorials, like the yahrtzeit candle in a glass. 'We lose and we go on losing,' but the poems are never far from harsh joy, the joy that is 'the wine of life.'

"Growing up haunted by Holocaust ghosts is an echo throughout the book, and some of the strongest poems are about the Holocaust, poems that become the voices of those who had no voice: 'What you  carry in your blood is us,  the books we did not write, music we could not make, a world  gone from gristle to smoke, only  as real now as words can make it.'

"Marge Piercy's words make such a moving variety of experiences beautifully and forcefully real."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme, by Marge Piercy, is that rare book of self-avowedly religious poetry whose devotional purpose actually enhances its poetic strength. Piercy's poems, organized in chapters with thematic headings like "Family," "Marriage," and "Prayer," are plainly presented as help for living. Readers will turn to poems such as "Putting the Good Things Away" when they need inspiration for understanding their self-sacrificing mothers. Yet Piercy's devotions are real poems with a literary integrity whose strength and beauty are free of sentimentality. They are also like liturgy, because they make room for readers to experience new aspects of contemporary life while simultaneously offering the security of very old frameworks for perceiving life. The Jewish themes of these poems are sometimes overt (as in "Chuppah"), but they are often more subtle (as in "The Art of Blessing the Day"). Throughout, they evince the careful balance of faithful attention to worldly life and the humble consideration of cosmic order that distinguishes Judaism among Western religions. "Attention is love," Piercy writes in the title poem, "what we must give / children, mothers, fathers, pets, / our friends, the news, the woes of others. / What we want to change we curse and then / pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can / with eyes and hands and tongue. If you / can't bless it, get ready to make it new." --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

We tend to think of writers according to categoriesAnovelist, poet, essayistAand find it hard to imagine a writer who excels in more than one medium. But Piercy has written many wonderful novels (e.g., Braided Lives, LJ 1/82; Vida, LJ 1/80) and an equal number of deeply moving and exquisitely crafted books of poetry (e.g., What Are Big Girls Made Of? LJ 2/1/97). Her newest volume of poetry is in many ways the best yet. It brings together poems written to celebrate Piercy's Jewishness, reflecting and expressing the joy, pain, passion, and elegance of this rich culture. Her poems overflow with family, ritual, tradition, history, and food. In the amazing "The Ark of Consequence," Piercy plays with the meanings of "ark" and "arc," calling us to recognize the interconnectedness of all that we do and are and understand that our actions have consequences: "What we shoot up into orbit falls/ to earth one night through the roof." A group of Shabbat poems and a section on seder foods fervently capture the intensity and flavor of the Jewish tradition. Highly recommended for all libraries.AJudy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; Reprint edition (September 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375704310
• ISBN-13: 978-0375704314
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.4 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #368,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #47 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Jewish

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Praise of the Passion and Beauty in "The Art of...", April 14, 1999

By 

Ruth Daigon (CORTE MADERA, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (Hardcover)

I've just finished reading "The Art Of Blessing The Day" for the third time, and every time I read it, I discover something new. There is so much depth and so many levels of meaning that each reading seems like the first for me. It's such a rich, marvelous collection that it's almost impossible to convey how much it affected me. She composed it like a piece of music. Each section has its theme, and moves from poem to poem with so much variation and skill. There's a gorgeous rhythm to her work and the harmonies are equally beautiful. Her voice is like an instrument creating vocative music...elegiac...celebratory...even though pain surfaces from time to time. It's okay! It belongs! She has awakened in me so many memories, and in reliving them through her art, I arrive at new insights, new understandings. The poem about her mother refusing to wear her gifts really struck a chord. When my mother died, I returned home and together with my sisters went through all her stuff systematically, and we simply wept when we saw every gift we had ever given her over the years was wrapped in tissue paper and had never been worn. We could almost hear her voice saying "Es eez tzu goot far mihr" "It's too good for me. I am unworthy". That is a terrible weapon wielded by our mothers.You can't give them anything...but that's an old story and she tells it so well. To return to the music in Piercy's poetry: she begins with a fanfare "The Art of Blessing...."and I know what's coming but she continues to astonish me with the variety of rhythms, the way one poem flows subtly and skillfully into the next. She moves from lyric passages to sophisticated tempos, witty interludes, a few jazz riffs, and the tension and tone doesn't allow me to sit back and relax because even in the quieter poems there is such depth and power. My god! Where does all that energy come from? It must be exhausting for her but exhilerating for the reader. Her passion and belief strike a very deep chord in me, and, I'm certain, in anyone who reads this moving and generous collection. Thank you, Marge Piercy, for the many wonderful hours I spent with you "In the Art of Blessing the Day" and all of those still to come.

Ruth Daigon

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true surprising gem!, August 31, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (Hardcover)

Since there are already some long reviews of this book, I will just make one specific comment. On reading about the book, a person could get the idea that these are poems for Jews & Jews alone. The publisher leads one to think that. However, even though the poems are thoroughly Jewish, they can be enjoyed by people of any religious background, including athiests such as myself. Marge Piercy transends the genre her publisher tries to confine her in, being a brilliant poet of incredible depth & talent.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Discipline of Blessings", June 16, 2001

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (Paperback)

Among the many blessings to be found in American literature and poetry are the works of American-Jewish writers. Jewish-American poets have been celebrated in two recent anthologies: Telling and Remembring edited by Rubin and Jewish-American Poetry edited by Barron and Sellinger. Ever since Emma Lazarus, writing in the late 19th Century, the poetry written by American Jewish women have played a large part in this literature.

Marge Piercy may well be the best of the Jewish-American poets writing today. Her work is featured prominently in both the Rubin and the Barron and Sellinger anthologies with the latter collection including an essay as well. Both anthologies draw heavily from Ms. Piercy's "The Art of Blessing the Day" which prompted me to explore the entire volume.

The book as written, the dedication states, "for all who may find here poems that speak to their identity, their history, their desire for ritual -- ritual that may work for them". The collection is, indeed, specifically Jewish but its themes transcend any particular religious commitment and reach out to those who seek themselves in a spiritual path. The broad theme of the book is announced in the title poem (from which I have taken the title of this review) as "to taste/each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet/ and the salty, and be glad for what does not hurt." Again "Bless whatever you can/with eyes and hands and tongue. If you/can't bless it, get ready to make it new."

I was struck by the unity of the collection. Unlike most books of poetry where the reader may pick and choose among poems, this collection is best read as an integral whole from beginning to end. The unity of the collection is particularly impressive because many of the poems had been published earlier in a variety of places.

The book is divided into six sections with themes running cross-currently. The opening section, "Family" describes the poets difficult relationship with her mother and her loving relationship with her old-world grandmother. The section on her marriage was for me the most beautiful of the book with its celebration of erotic, physical and spiritual love. My favorite poem in the third section, "repair of the world" is the poem "to be of use" which celebrates the value of the world of work. (too infrequently praised). The next section is titled "Of history and Interpretation", explores women's issues and the Holocaust, as seen from the eyes of an American, among other themes. The final two sections "Prayer" and "The Year" are based respectively on the daily liturgy used in Judaism and on the yearly cycle of the Jewish holidays including the New Year, the Day of Atonement and Passover. Her versions of the traditional prayers I found insightful and eloquent.

Ms Piercy writes beautifully, with elegance and understatement. Her poetry, with its reflections on the past and on nature and on her surroundings is informed by love rather than anger and by an effort to understand. It is a book that may be turned to repeatedly and thought about over time.

Poetry is an underappreciated art in America, even though many of our writers have shown high achievement. This book is one woman's contribution to the form.