The Hour of My Death

Marge Piercy's last work is a testimony to her legacy.

After revered poet, writer, and feminist icon Marge Piercy dies in a medical emergency in October 2022, only to be resuscitated, she wakes to create her legacy piece. The Hour of My Death: A Journal of the Year After I Died is a personal narrative in the Japanese Zuihitsu literary form that encompasses diary-style entries, recipes, gardening advice and her luminous poetry, all detailing a joyful year of living in her resurrected old age.

The new poems seize moments of fierce joy, while the prose offers glimpses of domestic bliss, from the garden to the fireside, and into the heart of the kitchen via recipes that Marge has cooked for decades.