{"product_id":"the-art-of-blessing-the-day-poems-with-a-jewish-theme-9780375404771","title":"The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinner of the 2000 Paterson Poetry Prize  About Marge Piercys collection of her old and new poems that celebrate the Jewish experience  the poet Lyn Lifshin writes: \"The Art of Blessing the Day is an exquisite book. The whole collection is strong  passionate  and poignant  but the mother and daughter poems  fierce and emotional  with their intense ambivalence  pain and joy  themes of separation and reconnecting  are among the very strongest about that difficult relationship.  \"These striking  original  beautifully sensuous poems do just that. Ordinary moments--a sunset  a walk  a private religious ritual--are so alive in poems like Shabbat moment and Rosh Hodesh. In the same way that she celebrates ordinary moments  small things become charged with memories and feelings: paper snowflakes  buttons  one bird  a bottle-cap flower made from a ginger ale top and crystal beads.  \"She celebrates the body in rollicking  gusto-filled poems like Belly good and The chuppah  where our bodies open their portals wide. So much that is richly sensuous: hands that caressed you  . . . untied the knot of pleasure and loosened your flesh till it fluttered  and lush praise for life in our spines  our throats  our knees  our genitals  our brains  our tongues.  \"I love the humor in poems like Eat fruit  the nostalgia and joy in The rabbis granddaughter and the Christmas tree  the fresh  beautiful images of nature--In winter . . .the sun hangs its wizened rosehip in the oaks.  \"I admire Piercys sense of the past alive in the present  in personal and social history. The poems are memorials  like the yahrtzeit candle in a glass. We lose and we go on losing  but the poems are never far from harsh joy  the joy that is the wine of life.  \"Growing up haunted by Holocaust ghosts is an echo throughout the book  and some of the strongest poems are about the Holocaust  poems that become the voices of those who had no voice: What you carry in your blood is us  the books we did not write  music we could not make  a world gone from gristle to smoke  only as real now as words can make it.  \"Marge Piercys words make such a moving variety of experiences beautifully and forcefully real.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45279903121461,"sku":"ByrdShop_0375404775","price":53.04,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780375404771.jpg?v=1780615649","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-art-of-blessing-the-day-poems-with-a-jewish-theme-9780375404771","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}