Marge Piercy is known in England mainly as a novelist. That the author of Vida and Woman on the Edge of Time is also a powerful, distinctively American poet may come as a surprise, even to her admirers. As might be expected, The Moon is Always Female reflects the uncompromising bias of the committed feminist, of which some of us by now are weary. But Marge Piercy's poems are so energetic and so intelligent that weariness is out of the question. This is, in fact, her sixth book of poems, and it is an excellent one. A tough, often humorous, sometimes angry view of herself emerges from the poems, yet they are free of embitterment. They lack that harsh edge of hysterical accusation—as if with a few nasty words one could instantly abolish half the human race—which spoils so many poems by women these days. Here, finally, is a feminist artist for whom one need rarely blush.

The Moon is Always Female is gratifyingly longer than most poetry volumes, and absorbing throughout. In effect, Ms Piercy is still a novelist in her poems; she has perfected an easy-flowing unrhymed line in which she says what she means with few frills. If you object to poems that tell you things, then you will not like this book. As for myself, I cannot resist delighting in such lines as "All / things have their uses / except morality / in the woods" ("Indian pipe") or "I find it easy to admire in trees / what depresses me in people" ("The doughty oaks")….

Apart from some endearing poems about her cats, Piercy's work scarcely qualifies as tender. Her love poems are fierce, even vulgar (possibly she wants to sound vulgar; vulgarity defeats gentility). Energy and exuberance render her extremely likable, however, even when she is howling—or preaching….

It is possible, of course, to find all … [Piercy's] feminist rabble-rousing annoying. However good the advice, poetry may not be the best vehicle for it. Indeed, if Marge Piercy were only a rabble-rouser she would not be a poet. The fact is, she can be as subtle as anyone writing today…. All … [the poems here] are interesting, some are masterpieces. One called "At the well" borrows an aged witch from Celtic mythology and gives her a fight with an angel. The witch represents magic, if you like, or superstition; certainly fear of suffering and a longing for safety. The angel represents the trans-sexual spirit of existence itself: youth and age, pain and happiness, good and evil. In the course of the fight the witch thrusts the angel from her. "Get from me / wielder of the heart's mirages", she cries "I will follow you to no more graves." So the angel departs. The witch is left blind. Fortunately the moral is not drawn. The poem trembles with an ambiguity which is its power. "At the well" alone would convince me that Marge Piercy is one of America's major writers….

[The] strength of Piercy's work is its outwardness, its frankness. Even if you do not agree with her, you have to meet Marge Piercy half way.