The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme (Hardcover)

~ Marge Piercy (Author)

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

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (March 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375404775
• ISBN-13: 978-0375404771
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,196,311 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 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

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

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

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

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

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It takes skill, practice and our attention, July 23, 2001

By A Customer

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

Marge Piercy's poems are made of the substance and stuff of life. The taste of a fresh peach, the joy of picking the first garden tomato, become sources and places of contact with the mystery of creation and the Creator! However,it takes a disciplined eye that has time to pay attention to the detail of ordinary daily events to see something eternally extraordinary. !!Piercy's has the eyes to see , the mind to imagine and the skill to tell us where, and how to look!