Of course I would read The Hour of My Death, the newest and possibly final work by Marge Piercy. Her 1980 collection of poetry The Moon Is Always Female is the single thing my first lover gave me that I kept after that relationship went down in flames. I still have it.
The yearlong journal Piercy kept after a medical emergency that led to the insertion of a pacemaker is being released by Sibylline Press in October. Sibylline, also the publisher of my forthcoming novel, specializes in women authors. Getting Piercy’s journal is a fine coup for the growing California-based press, and I jumped at the chance to do an early review.
The Hour of My Death: A Journal of the Year After I Died is written in a loose form the Japanese call zuihitsu, which means “following the brush.” The flowing style lets writers play freely with fragments of thoughts, personal essays and poetry. Piercy’s journal wanders, doubles back on itself, and shifts gears. But just when you think you’ve learned everything you want to know about Piercy’s three cats or the summer squashes in her vegetable garden, she will nail a point to the wall with all her ferocity, wisdom and smart-assery. Then you will think, I wish I’d known her when. Look, you can know her when. Her books are all out there, waiting for you.
The heart trouble that almost killed her happened when she was 86, and coming back from it was an act of will that belies the frail-old-lady stereotype we all have of that age. Piercy got on with things. Her annual poetry workshop was one of those things. It involved selecting twelve participants from the hundreds of applicants, doing a deep analysis of the poems the successful applicants submitted, and then spending five days leading writing exercises and discussions.
The poems scattered through the book include “Body Bingo,” a wry, dry analysis that gives pain a voice. In that poem, the ankle asks permission from the eyes before launching its own pain signals.
Besides the essays and poems, Piercy has included recipes and isn’t fussy about them. She presumes her readers are sufficiently savvy to figure out things like cooking temperature, quantity of protein and/or vegetables needed and appropriate amount of spicing. You can imagine being in the kitchen with her and watching a pinch of this and a hunk of that and oh, here’s something that ought to get used going into a pot. There’s a generosity of spirit in this kind of recipe, as though Piercy is saying: Of course you’ve got this. You’ll sort it out.
A few one-liners that made me feel I’d been in the room with her:
- I died last October but the rescue squad revived me into my new life, more fragile, now wide open to each moment drab or shining.
- I’ve never been ashamed of growing up poor and never lost the radical edge that gave me. I don’t forgive or forget.
- It’s a shitstorm being old but I wouldn’t erase my experiences for anything.
If you don’t know Marge Piercy’s work, don’t start with this book. Go get one of her fine novels, Gone to Soldiers, say, or a poetry collection. Know her work first. Then settle in with The Hour of My Death. Expect a lively, sharp, poetic, philosophical conversation with a woman who has thrived amid turmoil and written passionately about her generation.
A note: The book is available for preorder at Sibylline.
Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now 