For over a decade Marge Piercy's has been the vehement and scrupulous voice of a political woman coming to terms with her times and herself. Circles on the Water is Piercy's selection of her poetry to date and contains poems from seven published volumes as well as seven new poems. Activist and feminist. Piercy has recorded the thoughtful but equally sensory experience of a woman with the difficult intent to both work and love…. Yet while her sentiments are consistently apt and accurate, their polemical nature, no matter how grounded in personal experience, all too often results in statements more like speeches than poetry. Her work is strong in images but slight in music, and her language has a flatness that is at odds with the fullness of her life.

Suzanne Juhasz, in a review of "Circles on the Water: Selected Poems," in Library Journal (reprinted from Library...