Piercy's poetry reflects the immediate, specific experiences of daily life—eating breakfast, making love, going to work. It is concerned with the routine business of living and feeling and doing, and it is concerned with these things from a woman's point of view. There is always a danger that poems about little occurrences will become poems of little consequence, that poems which deal with current issues and topics will become mere polemic and propaganda, that poems of the everyday will become pedestrian. To a very large extent, however, Marge Piercy avoids these dangers because most of her poetry contributes to and extends a coherent vision of the world—as it is now and as it should be.

Piercy's desire is for a world of wholeness and completeness, where natural growth and development can lead to a satisfying participation in the fulness of life. As individual poems recount instances...