Available Light by Marge Piercy
"Available Light" by Marge Piercy is an autobiographical poem that explores the themes of self-discovery, memory, and the passage of time through a free verse format. Comprising eleven six-line stanzas, the poem begins with the poet reflecting on her present life as a mature woman, acknowledging her desires and the complexities of self-knowledge. As Piercy delves into her past, she recalls various memories, each seemingly disconnected, highlighting her ongoing struggle for understanding amidst the chaos of life experiences.
The poem contrasts light and darkness, using the metaphor of "available light" not just as a reference to visual perception but as a means to explore inner vision and acceptance of life’s limitations. As the poet contemplates her Jewish identity and the expectations of continual self-reinvention, she grapples with the complexities of consequence and nature. The imagery throughout the poem is rich and vivid, drawing on various sensory experiences to convey deeper emotional truths.
Ultimately, "Available Light" culminates in a moment of tranquility and acceptance, suggesting that even within the starkness of winter, there is a profound sense of life and connection to the natural world. Through its exploration of contrasting themes and vivid imagery, the poem invites readers to reflect on their own journeys of self-awareness and acceptance.
Available Light by Marge Piercy
First published: 1988, in Available Light
Type of poem: Meditation
The Poem
“Available Light” is an autobiographical meditation in free verse. It consists of eleven six-line stanzas. Each of the first five of these stanzas has a definitive ending. However, the last six stanzas are paired: In each case, the first stanza ends in mid-sentence, unpunctuated, and the thought moves without a pause into the second. The final stanza ends with two lines that sum up all that has gone before. Though the title is a term taken from photography, it is meant to be a play on words: It is not visualized reality but the development of her own inner vision that Marge Piercy will be describing. A mature woman, she is looking back over her life in order to understand the person she has become.
“Available Light” begins in the present. In middle age, the poet asserts, sexual appetites are both “rampant” and “allowed,” and she is as filled with desire as nature itself. In the second stanza, the poet moves to another favorite activity, her four-mile morning walks. However, in this stanza she also introduces the theme of self-knowledge: “I know myself,” she begins the stanza, but she later modifies this statement by explaining that she also knows that her knowledge is imperfect. The poem, then, will shed some light on her past and on herself, but only the light that is “available.”
In the third stanza, Piercy moves into the past, recalling scenes from four different times in her life, the last when she was twenty-four. As she points out in the fourth stanza, there seems to be no logical connection between these memories. The past is a medium in which, like a person under water, she has difficulty breathing. She is assaulted with details; she is confused as she keeps finding “new beings” in herself, unlike the friends mentioned in the fifth stanza, each of whom is committed to a single cause or faith. For someone who is Jewish, she explains, it is not so easy. Her God expects believers to remake themselves continually, while at the same time God refuses to intervene between cause and effect.
The two-stanza segment that follows begins with this problem of “consequences.” Though the poet yearns to see “the larger picture,” she knows that she cannot change nature, with its “million deaths” per inch, or, brought down to more comprehensible terms, its grounded “pilot whales,” which human beings are struggling so desperately but perhaps so hopelessly to save. Appropriately, the next two-stanza segment is set in winter, the darkest time of year. The fifty-year-old poet’s effort to learn Hebrew is somehow connected with the need to forgive her parents, who she now realizes, like the poet herself, were hampered by having only “scanty light.” Finally, the poet once more ventures out into the night. Tranquil at last, she can now see even the distant stars, and she can also see all the creatures around her. Though this is called the “dead of winter,” she concludes, it contains more life than she can ever “live to name and speak.” Thus, surrounded by the profusion of nature, she seems to accept the limitations of her own understanding and of her own life.
Forms and Devices
In a generally enthusiastic review of the book Available Light for the Women’s Review of Books, Diane Wakoski raised questions about the book title, pointing out that Piercy’s poetry depends much less on visual perception than on the other senses. It may be relevant that by the time this collection appeared, Piercy had developed such serious problems with her eyes that she had difficulty reading and even traveling. A decade later, despite eighteen operations, she had only one eye that was of much use. Given this personal history, the title Available Light seems more than appropriate. However, there is not necessarily any connection between Piercy’s physical problems and her imagery; it may be that she is simply more attuned than other writers to input from the other four senses.
Images are certainly of major importance in the title poem of the collection, and it is true that they are perceived in various ways. Many are visual: The poet sees the sky, the airplanes, the tracks in the snow, the skunk, and the weasel. Naturally, before the use of television became common, she would hear about the president on the radio instead of viewing him. However, she also mentions a “p.a. system” and the hooting of the owl, while she imagines smelling “Leviathan” (a whale). As for touch or feeling, the poet describes the frozen ground beneath her feet, the cold air against her skin, sexual experiences, the sensation of trying to breathe under water, and even the imagined penetration of the blood by “glowing isotopes.” By depending on so many different modes of perception for her imagery, Piercy creates a texture that is strikingly vivid and rich. However, she also utilizes patterns of imagery as a device for suggesting her own conflicts and her abiding concerns. Piercy’s images fall naturally into such dichotomies as light and darkness, sky and earth, indoors and outdoors, past and present, and life and death. As “Available Light” progresses, specific images appear and disappear, but these conflicting elements are evident throughout. For example, the poem begins with the “solstice moon” and the dark places of the female genitalia, proceeds to a winter day when “the light is red and short,” and ends with a starlit night. In the third stanza, the procreative impulse is followed immediately by a friend’s death, and, in the final lines, the “dead” time of the year is more alive than the poet “can ever live to name and speak.” It is these contrasting images that dramatize Piercy’s stated theme.
Sources for Further Study
Booklist. LXXXIV, April 1, 1988, p. 1306.
Library Journal. CXIII, March 15, 1988, p. 60.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIII, February 5, 1988, p. 81.
San Francisco Chronicle. June 5, 1988, p. REV5.
Women’s Review of Books. V, July, 1988, p. 7.