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by: Grace Paley
List Price: $14.00Amazon.com's Price: $11.20 You Save: $2.80 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780374527242
ISBN: 0374527245
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: March 14, 2001
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sales Rank: 193029
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A longtime teacher, activist, feminist, and masterful writer of short fiction and essays, Paley is also an accomplished poet. Combining her two previous collections with unpublished work, Begin Again traces the career of a direct, attentive, and always unpredictable poet. Whether describing the vicissitudes of life in New York City or the hard beauty of rural Vermont, whether celebrating the blessings of friendship or protesting against social injustice, her poems brim with compassion and tough good humor.
Amazon.com Review:
For someone who describes herself as a 'combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist,' Grace Paley writes poetry like a rebel angel. Combining selections from her two previous volumes as well as new and unpublished poems, Begin Again is the work of a seasoned literary veteran but also that of a lifelong bur under the establishment's saddle. A teacher, activist, and National Book Award-winning master of the short story form, Paley fashions poems as terse as haiku but as direct and earthy as a note to a friend--which, in fact, several of these seem to be. Here are poems about milkweed pods, Saint John's wort, bees, and ants, as well as poems about El Salvador, Vietnam, and AIDS. Verses about the five-day week ('like a long bath in the / first bathtub of God') rub shoulders with those about responsibility: It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet's responsibility to speak truth to power as the Quakers say Who else could pen these lines and not perish under their weight? To say that Paley is a political writer is like saying that the hero of the Old Testament is an omnipotent God; without either half of the equation, there isn't much point. War, capitalism, sanitary napkins, old age and old dogs: no detail in the lives of men and women is too large or too small to warrant her compassionate eye. These are poems deeply invested in life and the world, rendered in a voice so immediate you feel you've called Grace up for a chat. --Chloe Byrne
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Smile, cry, mourn, love
The poetry in this book is a gift. I borrowed this book from the library, but it is now on my Christmas list.
I offer one of Paley's poem that is all too relevant today.
I Gave Away That Kid
I gave away that kid like he was an old button
Here old button get off of me
I don't need you anymore
go on get out of here
go into the army
sew yourself onto the colonel's shirt
or the captain's fly jackass
don't you have any sense
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