Marge Piercy (born March 31, 1936) is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968. As of 2004 she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one nonfiction book, and one memoir. Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the USA as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. Yet all of her books share a focus on women's lives.
why marry at all?
Why mar what has grown up between the cracks
and flourished like a weed
that discovers its...[read poem]
 |
|
|
|
|
 | ||||
and flourished like a weed
that discovers its...
always unsuitable
She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.
They were grinning politely and evenly at me....[read poem]
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
They were grinning politely and evenly at me....
a dream
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed--
But a waking dream of l...[read poem]
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
I have dreamed of joy departed--
But a waking dream of l...
to helen
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a...[read poem]
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a...
the city in the sea
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the di...[read poem]
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the di...
a dream within a dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
Y...[read poem]
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
Y...
to -- -- --. ulalume: a ballad
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere--
...[read poem]
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
The leaves they were crispéd and sere--
...
the raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious v...[read poem]
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
Over many a quaint and curious v...
for annie
Thank Heaven! the crisis,
The danger, is past,
And the lingering illness
Is o...[read poem]
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
The danger, is past,
And the lingering illness
Is o...
Continue in Edgar Allan Poe »»»
Page 1 of 1