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 as a surprise, even to her admirers. As might be expected, The Moon is Always Female reflects the uncompromising bias of the committed feminist, of which some of us by now are weary. But Marge Piercy's poems are so energetic and so intelligent that weariness is out of the question. This is, in fact, her sixth book of poems, and it is an excellent one. A tough, often humorous, sometimes angry view of herself emerges from the poems, yet they are free of embitterment. They lack that harsh edge of hysterical accusation—as if with a few nasty words one could instantly abolish half the human race—which spoils so many poems by women these days. Here, finally, is a feminist artist for whom one need rarely blush.
The Moon is Always Female is gratifyingly longer than most poetry volumes, and absorbing throughout. In effect, Ms Piercy is still a novelist in her poems; she has perfected an easy-flowing unrhymed line in which she says what she means with few frills. If you object to poems that tell you things, then you will not like this book. As for myself, I cannot resist delighting in such lines as "All / things have their uses / except morality / in the woods" ("Indian pipe") or "I find it easy to admire in trees / what depresses me in people" ("The doughty oaks")….
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