Sample Poetry and Analysis of Marge Piercy's Work
"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.
Cecile had been seduction itself in college.
She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,
her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed
in the dark red lipstick of desire.
She visited in '68 still wearing skirts
tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,
while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,
lipstick pale as apricot milk,
hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear,
I thought in my superiority of the moment,
whatever has happened to poor Cecile?
She was out of fashion, out of the game,
disqualified, disdained,
dismembered from the club of desire.
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,
ever grows, never fades. She
sits at the table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain.
A cat or dog approaches another,
they sniff noses. They sniff asses.
They bristle or lick. They fall
in love as often as we do,
as passionately. But they fall
in love or lust with furry flesh,
not hoop skirts or push up bras
rib removal or liposuction.
It is not for male or female dogs
that poodles are clipped
to topiary hedges.
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?
“For The Young Who Want To”
Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
In “What are Big Girls Made of”, Piercy accurately depicts the kinds of expectations that are placed upon women by our demanding society, and the pressure that they succumb to, to meet these expectations. In her poem, Piercy tells the story of a woman she once knew, who was a supposedly perfect, yet it was not her personality or mannerisms that were perfect, but merely her appearance. Piercy talks honestly about the things women do, and the habits they form to become “desirable”. Piercy discusses the rituals of beauty from the 18th century, and leads up to how modern women are ultimately doing the same things. “She is retooled, refitted and redesigned/ every decade. This line from the poem shows how women ultimately mold themselves to the desirable image of the time. Piercy’s writing shows how she fees about the somewhat degrading “perfect” image that is presented in the world for people to aspire to. This image so often becomes a person’s main focus and eventually the importance of a person’s unique qualities gets overlooked in a quest for perfection.
In “For the Young Who Want To”, Piercy writes about how a person with a dream can be doubted at first, but once they become successful, suddenly onlookers offer praise instead of criticism. In the poem, Piercy accurately writes about how you can try to pursue different things throughout your life, yet the people around you are quick to offer criticism and say you are wasting your time. Once you become successful however, people accept what you are doing.
“Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting”.
In this stanza, Piercy shows how sometimes people only accept something once it has “officially” been declared good, and if everyone else agrees. People will be quick to judge and say you are wasting your time, but once you have “made it” they will believe in you. In the poem, Piercy says, “…you have to/ like it better than being loved”, in other words, you have to persevere with what you’re doing instead of worrying if others will accept it or not.
