To Be of Use

Here is a new collection of poems from a writer of striking authority. Marge Piercy's voice is heard from the front lines-powerful, articulate, calling for change. Looking to the recent past, she makes stunningly clear the psychic damage women have suffered, and which they themselves, in their passivity, have perpetuated. She addresses herself not only to activists, but wives, lovers, secretaries, shop girls-all wo men conditioned to shield themselves from them selves-and delivers a fatal blow to stereotypes -woman as baby machine, earthmother, mirror-image, toy: "You love him as his mother always told him he deserved to be loved. Now love yourself. " Then she looks beyond today, where women will learn to speak again, "starting as the infant does, with her own true hunger and pleasure and rage, " making real connections, making places to live in, grow in, reach out from. At last, women living as if they liked themselves. These, indeed, are poems of change, encompassing a multi-leveled revolution: of the spirit, as it moves toward self-awareness; of the conscience, as it works toward a better world. The language ranges from spare and terse to richly imaginistic. The sequence, LAYING DOWN THE TOWER, in which each poem is a card of a reading of the Tarot, is a remarkable attempt to re-encounter the ancient symbols of myth and dream in the light of new values.