April 6, 2008
A new Grace Paley poetry collection
In the New York Times Sunday Book Review section today, there was a review of “Fidelity,” a poetry collection by Grace Paley.
Paley, one of the finest short story writers of her generation, died last summer at age 84.
Mary Jo Salter, author of the recently published “A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems,” wrote the Times review of Paley's book:
Paley reproduces with touching fidelity what it is to be old, and sick, and missing one’s vanished friends, and philosophical up to a point — but unwilling to part with dear life. The authenticity of her response to experience, which includes political protest (she never stopped being a liberal activist, even on the page), remains winning as ever. I was surprised how much I liked a poem such as “The Hard-Hearted Rich,” for instance, which in its last lines rises above its tired premise. After refusing smugly to give coins to beggars, at the end of the day the rich in their beds “decide to try / love as a kind of heart softener / they are tired and think to try love.”
Those are the sort of lines that remind you of how good Paley was. And, how much she will be missed by her fans.