In my January column I promised I would return to the poetry of Marge Piercy. Now I'll tell you why. I had spent a rainy Sunday reading poetry—three volumes that day. The first two I read were by a member of the literary Establishment and were the kind of poetry I generally praise—for controlled metrical form, often with rhyme, understatement, wit, irony, rationality, a tone that is intellectual, genteel, delicately sensitive, precise. And I nodded half the day.

I was left with a throat dry with admiration….

It happened that I had checked out the only available volume of Marge Piercy's poetry from our local library. I had recently read her latest novel, Vida, and was so excited by that book that I wanted to know her poetry better (which I had seen only occasionally, scattered in little magazines). After doing my duty with those other volumes that Sunday, I turned to Piercy. She relieved my parched throat.

The reason is simple. Her poetry is readable. Poem after poem made sense, was moving, engaging, amusing, entertaining, insightful. Each made a human connection. I felt as if I were being spoken to by a person who really wanted me to hear her and to know why it was important that I hear. (p. 56)

Readability, incidentally, has nothing much to do with difficulty…. Most of the poetry through the centuries has been difficult—but if it endured, it was also readable. The poetry of Marge Piercy is not simple. But, unlike much poetry published today, it was intended to be understood.

In addition to readability, it has gusto. As a critical term, gusto has fallen out of currency…. [Gusto] is not mere exuberance, but exuberance channeled by an insistence on accuracy. The exact hurrah. Or the exact bellow—for exuberance is not always expressed in celebration.

You get a little of the bellow and the hurrah in ["What it costs"], from Piercy's latest collection, The Moon Is Always Female…. Consider the possibilities, those hundreds of you who send me poems of disappointed love each year. You can whine about it—and most of you do. You can lash out at the lousy lover who had such bad judgment in leaving you—and many of you do that. Or you might, as this poem does, say: "This is my problem. I have to survive." (pp. 56, 58)

It is enthusiasm for life, so intent that it cannot afford sloppy responses, that generates Piercy's celebrations of love, of gardening and nature, of other strong people (especially strong women)—and her anger at the corporate system that indifferently poisons our lives, at our imperialistic wars, at male domination that feeds those evils, at small-mindedness and hypocritical self-seeking, at the leeches who attach themselves to her career as poet and novelist, at life-destroying forces everywhere. That gusto generates her powerful imagery, the energy of her clear, direct, no-nonsense sentences, and the throbbing rhythm of her lines.

Her poems are saved from propaganda simplicities by the recognition of difficulty. Her love poetry (usually to one person, usually to a man, but sometimes to a woman, and sometimes to groups in which she is linked by love) is more convincing than most because it almost always acknowledges the problems, both in herself and others, that interfere with simple joy. (p. 58)

One never senses complacency. Reading one of her more strident poems, "For strong women," I was amused to think of it in comparison with Kipling's "If."… Instructing his "Son" to be a man, Kipling describes a superhuman cool, a calm, cautious superiority. Piercy's ideal of strong women is one of passionate involvement, vulnerable, agonizing, torn by the inevitable "weakness" of craving love. (pp. 58-9)

Kipling, though, has one advantage over Piercy. No daughter, however encouraged by her mother (or father), is likely to memorize "For strong women," and so not even such scraps of this poem will be preserved as have been those scraps of "If" that remain in my mind after 30-odd years when the text is not at hand. (p. 59)

Memorability may not be an important goal for Marge Piercy…. But I think we have reached the point at which the label poetry has been stretched into meaninglessness. We may need new forms. (pp. 59, 61)

Meanwhile, we live with what we get—and if you want the rare experience of reading through a book of poetry with the pleasure and engagement you would have reading a book of good prose, try the work of Marge Piercy…. (p. 61)