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Source: Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982) More About This Poem. The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
‘To be of use’ by Marge Piercy depicts one speaker’s preference to be around those who work hard and understand the importance of perseverance. The poem takes the reader through metaphorical comparisons between oxen, water buffalo, and seals.
2 kwi 2012 · An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. ... Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art. Featured. All Images; Flickr Commons; Occupy Wall Street Flickr; Cover Art; USGS Maps; Top. ... To be of use by Piercy, Marge. Publication date 1973 Publisher Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday
To Be of Use The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls.
“To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy is a lyric poem of four stanzas that was first published in a 1973 collection of the same title. This collection was Piercy’s fourth, published relatively early in her career.
“To Be of Use” is a poem that focuses on the value of hard work, the meaningfulness of that work, and the necessity of perseverance. In the poem’s opening, Piercy’s speaker discusses the “people [they] love the best” (Line 1), expressly detailing that those who work hard, even when the situations are adversarial, are admirable.
1 sty 2001 · Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
