Marge Piercy Summary

Marge Piercy epitomizes a feminist maxim: "The personal is political." In the essay "Mirror Images" (1980) Piercy writes, "My poetry appears to me at once more personal and universal than my fiction. ... Read more

In the following essay, Piercy describes the initial steps of her creative process—inspiration and concentration. Here is Henry Thoreau from his journal for October 26, 1853, although he is tal... Read more

In the following essay, Bender provides a thematic overview of Piercy's verse. Perhaps more than any other poet of her generation, Marge Piercy is most explicit in confronting the political, so... Read more

In the following essay, Nelson considers the theme of healing in Piercy's verse. Marge Piercy speaks of poetry as “utterance that heals on two levels.” First, it heals the psyche ... Read more

Critical Essay by Anatole Broyard I'd like to propose a program of civil rights for characters in novels. I don't think it is fair for authors to push them around or malign them just to ... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles Molesworth The spirit most felt in ["The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing"] is generous love, but love combined with scrutiny and even humor. Arranged around the se... Read more

Critical Essay by Jean Rosenbaum Piercy's poetry reflects the immediate, specific experiences of daily life—eating breakfast, making love, going to work. It is concerned with the routine... Read more

Critical Essay by Victor Contoski Not content to wait for happiness and prosperity in some other life, [Piercy] is driven to find a social and personal happiness on this earth, and the driving force b... Read more

Critical Essay by Vivian Gornick Vida Asch is the center of [Vida]. Beautiful, passionate, capable, the most popular of the Upper West Side revolutionaries, Vida has been a fugitive for nearly 10 year... Read more

Critical Essay by Betty Falkenberg On the whole, what is supposed to pass for honesty in [Vida], in both sexual and political matters, turns out, on closer inspection, to be a routine application of &... Read more

Critical Essay by Pearl K. Bell Marge Piercy is a prolific novelist and poet, a one-time organizer for SDS, who has become a spokesman for radical feminism. Though she presents herself as a revolution... Read more

Critical Essay by Renee Gold This is Marge Piercy's seventh novel, a fact that numerologists would have us believe augurs well for its success. A more substantial contribution to that success i... Read more

Critical Essay by Ron Schreiber Shortly after I agreed to review Marge Piercy's latest collection of poems, The Moon Is Always Female, two poets warned me that this was a disappointing collecti... Read more

Critical Essay by Publishers Weekly Marge Piercy has evolved through six books of poetry and seven novels … into the outstanding spokeswoman for the '60s generation. It is less her skill... Read more

Critical Essay by Roger Scruton Marge Piercy is an established author, and presumably has an established readership—though it is very difficult to gauge from Braided Lives what qualities of com... Read more

Critical Essay by Publishers Weekly Marge Piercy is a forceful, direct and widely read feminist poet. In ["Stone, Paper, Knife"], her ninth volume of verse, Piercy continues to write abo... Read more

Critical Essay by Erica Jong Writers who serve two muses—the muse of poetry and the muse of prose—often find that their passionate and intense lyrical outbursts find their way into poems... Read more

Critical Essay by Victor Contoski Because of Marge Piercy's strong views on social reform, from the very beginning her work has almost automatically divided people into two groups: those oppose... Read more

Critical Essay by Anne Stevenson 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 a... Read more

Critical Essay by Katha Pollitt The rise of feminism over the last 15 years has been accompanied by a proliferation of feminist novels—frankly didactic Bildungsromans whose subject is the educa... Read more