Fidelity

A park-bench writer who heard the music of the heart in everyday conversations, and perceived the epic struggle between good and evil in the humblest of lives, Paley infused her short stories, essays, and poems with ready compassion, forthright indignation, and peppery humor. A quintessential New Yorker, she absorbed lessons in the art of being human from the city's endless improvisation on survival. Family life fascinated, appalled, and sustained her, and her time in Vermont deepened her appreciation for the life force. Paley completed her final poetry collection at age 84, not long before her death, in August 2007, and the perspective, wisdom, and ironies of age salt every line. She never ceased to pay attention to the world, or to praise progress, however wryly: Fathers are / more fathering / these days they have / accomplished this by / being more mothering. Nor did Paley stop protesting war and greed: Oh how hard the hard-hearted rich are. Her poems are pithy, aphoristic, conversational, offhandedly beautiful, and right-on as Paley expresses her fidelity to honesty and connection:  A person should be in love most of / the time. --Seaman, Donna Copyright 2008 Booklist

When she died this summer at age 84, Paley was widely and rightly remembered as a master of the American short story, an engage raconteur who mixed earthly humor, Jewish-American heritage, outspoken feminism, antiwar activism and an understated postmodern self-awareness. Those facets did not all appear in Begin Again (2001), a collected poems praised more for honesty than craft; happily, Paley's many fans may find that her best poems were her last. The wry, friendly voices in this posthumous assemblage address her later years with equanimity and humor. As in her short stories, the apparent naivete of tone plays off the earned wisdom the teller finally conveys. In "I Met a Woman on the Plane," Paley listens to a mother of five living children explain that she cannot stop grieving for her sixth, who died. Other poems praise the territories Paley has known, with wit and kindness: Manhattan and Brooklyn streets and the hills of Vermont. Finally, though, this wise and patient collection focuses on old age, presented with an appealing combination of impatience and fortitude: "Anyone who gets to be/ eighty years old says thank you/ to the One in charge," Paley says, "and then im-/ mediately begins to complain." (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

"Life is as risky/ as it is branchy/ treetop and twigtip/ are only the beginning." Just before her death in 2007 at the age of 84, Paley compiled this smart, engaging collection. Rich with memories of family and friends, evocations of rural Vermont and her hometown of New York City, and assertions of clear-headed social convictions, these poems are sometimes melancholy, sometimes funny, and sometimes simply a pleasure. Finding herself at odds with aging-"I forget the names of my friends/ and the names of the flowers in/ my garden"-Paley shows us here she was nevertheless in continued and absolute control of her faculties. She was known as a none-too-shy advocate of peace and justice, especially in the everyday, and these poems are in keeping with her fine-tuned values: "Oh how hard the hard-hearted rich are/ when they meet a working person in their places/ of work a cab or restaurant kitchen." A fitting legacy for a wise and delightful writer; highly recommended for all collections.-Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A park-bench writer who heard the music of the heart in everyday conversations, and perceived the epic struggle between good and evil in the humblest of lives, Paley infused her short stories, essays, and poems with ready compassion, forthright indignation, and peppery humor. A quintessential New Yorker, she absorbed lessons in the art of being human from the city's endless improvisation on survival. Family life fascinated, appalled, and sustained her, and her time in Vermont deepened her appreciation for the life force. Paley completed her final poetry collection at age 84, not long before her death, in August 2007, and the perspective, wisdom, and ironies of age salt every line. She never ceased to pay attention to the world, or to praise progress, however wryly: "Fathers are / more fathering / these days they have / accomplished this by / being more mothering." Nor did Paley stop protesting war and greed: "Oh how hard the hard-hearted rich are." Her poems are pithy, aphoristic, conversational, offhandedly beautiful, and right-on as Paley expresses her fidelity to honesty and connection: "A person should be in love most of / the time." Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.

"Life is as risky/as it is branchy/treetop and twigtip/are only the beginning." Just before her death in 2007 at the age of 84, Paley compiled this smart, engaging collection. Rich with memories of family and friends, evocations of rural Vermont and her hometown of New York City, and assertions of clear-headed social convictions, these poems are sometimes melancholy, sometimes funny, and sometimes simply a pleasure. Finding herself at odds with aging—"I forget the names of my friends/and the names of the flowers in/my garden"—Paley shows us here she was nevertheless in continued and absolute control of her faculties. She was known as a none-too-shy advocate of peace and justice, especially in the everyday, and these poems are in keeping with her fine-tuned values: "Oh how hard the hard-hearted rich are/when they meet a working person in their places/of work a cab or restaurant kitchen." A fitting legacy for a wise and delightful writer; highly recommended for all collections.—Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia

When she died this summer at age 84, Paley was widely and rightly remembered as a master of the American short story, an engag raconteur who mixed earthly humor, Jewish-American heritage, outspoken feminism, antiwar activism and an understated postmodern self-awareness. Those facets did not all appear in Begin Again (2001), a collected poems praised more for honesty than craft; happily, Paley's many fans may find that her best poems were her last. The wry, friendly voices in this posthumous assemblage address her later years with equanimity and humor. As in her short stories, the apparent navet of tone plays off the earned wisdom the teller finally conveys. In "I Met a Woman on the Plane," Paley listens to a mother of five living children explain that she cannot stop grieving for her sixth, who died. Other poems praise the territories Paley has known, with wit and kindness: Manhattan and Brooklyn streets and the hills of Vermont. Finally, though, this wise and patient collection focuses on old age, presented with an appealing combination of impatience and fortitude: "Anyone who gets to be/ eighty years old says thank you/ to the One in charge," Paley says, "and then im-/ mediately begins to complain." (Mar.)