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Two decades ago, I recall an enthusiastic English teacher addressing our high school class on the topic of literature, more specifically, on the topic of poetry. At that point in time, this teacher stated that "poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature, saying the most in the fewest number of words." I have since discovered that poetry is language whose individual lines, either because of their own brilliance, or because they focus so powerfully on what has been experienced, have a higher voltage than ordinary language. This is strikingly true of Marge Piercy's poetry.
Writing in The New York Times in December of 1999, Piercy said,
"…Poems start from a phrase, an image, an idea, a rhythm insistent
in the back of the brain. … Some poems are a journey of discovery and exploration for the writer as well as the reader...Poems hatch from memory, fantasy, the need to communicate with the living, the dead, the unborn. Poems come directly out of daily life, from the garden, the cats, the newspaper, the lives of friends, quarrels, a good or bad time in bed, from cooking, from writing itself…There is something so personal and so impersonal at once in the activity that it is addictive. I may be dealing with my own anger, my humiliation, my passion, my pleasure; but once I am working with it in a poem, it becomes molten ore. It becomes 'not me.'…All the dearness and detritus of ordinary living falls away, even when that is the stuff of the poem. It is as remote as if I were an archaeologist working with the kitchen midden of a
4,000-year-old city. "
To read Piercy's work is to come into direct contact with the poet's life. In The Moon Is Always Female, one of the most diverse volumes of life's topics, we are given a view of her intimate life, her relationships with her cats, her political viewpoint
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