From Library Journal
Piercy's 15th collection of poetry starts in the mid-1970s and works backwards, beginning with excerpts from out-of-print works and ending with juvenilia and a section of previously uncollected work written over the last quarter-century. The "nudge" ("Song of the Nudge") is a familiar presence here, for this writer likes to fly in the face of restraint, decorum, and subtlety. When asked to have patience, she replies, in "Ask Me for Anything Else," "I am empty with wanting,/ not like a box/ but like a tiger's belly." Her poems acknowledge two types of readers: one presumably male, who while loving, opposes and resists her ravenous appetites; the other female, the women "retelling/ agonies like amber worry beads." In her introduction, Piercy claims to be a source of inspiration to young writers she admires?the "grrrls" of web-based feminism?and she even has her own web page. This selection may not include her strongest work, but will be important to those who follow her closely.?Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New YorkCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 18, 1999
Early Grrrl shows the skeptical eye how poets are born. This collection has many delights for Piercy fans . . . This is an important book. Many poems here are unpublished elsewhere. Many are indispensable works from one of America's most important poets.


About the Author
Marge Piercy is the author of fifteen novels and fifteen books of poetry, most recently What Are Big Girls Made Of? (Knopf) nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and selected as one of their Most Notable Books by the American Library Association.


Excerpted from Early Grrrl : The Early Poems of Marge Piercy by Marge Piercy. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Always unsuitable

She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.
They were grinning politely and evenly at me.
Unsuitable they smirked. It is true

I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts
too big for the silhouette. She knew
at once that we had sex, lots of it

as if I had strolled into her diningroom
in a dirty negligee smelling gamy
smelling fishy and sporting a strawberry

on my neck. I could never charm
the mothers, although the fathers ogled
me. I was exactly what mothers had warned

their sons against.I was quicksand
I was trouble in the afternoon. I was
the alley cat you don't bring home.

I was the dirty book you don't leave out
for your mother to see. I was the center-
fold you masturbate with then discard.

Where I came from, the nights I had wandered
and survived, scared them, and where
I would go they never imagined.

Ah, what you wanted for your sons
were little ladies hatched from the eggs
of pearls like pink and silver lizards

cool, well behaved and impervious
to desire and weather alike. Mostly
that's who they married and left.

Oh, mamas, I would have been your friend.
I would have cooked for you and held you.
I might have rattled the windows

of your sorry marriages, but I would
have loved you better than you know
how to love yourselves, bitter sisters.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This collection of new poems and old favorites, some long out of print and many never collected in Piercy's previous books is titled in homage to the 'Grrrl' phenomenon - a contemporary expression of the pride and passion of young women's lives exploding in books and zines, concerts, films, and the internetwhich in its honesty, accessibility and humor embodies the spirit of the poet's early work. Early Grrrl presents the bold and passionate ecological and political verse for which Piercy is well known alongside poems celebrating the sensual pleasures of gardening and cooking and sex; funny poems about cats and New Year's Eve and warring boom boxes; vulnerable poems in which a young working class woman from the Midwest takes stock of herself and the limits of her world.

SYNOPSIS

This collection of new poems and old favorites, some long out of print and many never collected in Piercy's previous books, is titled in homage to the 'Grrrl' phenomenon - a contemporary expression of the pride and passion of young women's lives exploding in books and zines, concerts, films, and the internet - which in its honesty, accessibility and humor embodies the spirit of the poet$#39;s early work. Early Grrrl presents the bold and passionate ecological and political verse for which Piercy is well known alongside poems celebrating the sensual pleasures of gardening and cooking and sex; funny poems about cats and New Year's Eve and warring boom boxes; vulnerable poems in which a young working class woman from the Midwest takes stock of herself and the limits of her world. For longtime fans and those new to Piercy's early work - "Clear but subtle, full of gusto and wisdom, guts and delicacy." (The Boston Globe) - this collection is an indispensable addition to the oeuvre of one of America's best-known and best-loved poets.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booklist

Piercy is a poet of womanhood and compassion, conscience and spirit, and her poems are as magnetic as mirrors: no one can resist them, and all, at least every woman, will catch a glimpse of themselves in their warm and dancing light ... It is obvious from the bright, saucy and shrewd early poems collected in Early Grrrl that Piercy''s gift ... is the truth of both nature and nurture. Piercy has dedicated this collection of long-out-of-print and never-before-published works to the women of the vibrant Grrrl movement - a feisty form of feminist expression found in zines and music and on the web - because Piercy has been Grrrl long before Grrrl got its name.

Library Journal