Author: Marge Piercy

Born in Detroit, Michigan, in the midst of the Great Depression, Marge Piercy (b. 1936) is an American poet and novelist, perhaps most famous for her New York Times best-selling novel Gone to Soldiers (1988). The first in her family to attend college, Piercy attended the University of Michigan and published her first book of poems in 1968. Since then, she has authored seventeen novels, a play, and eighteen volumes of poetry. Her website is margepiercy.com. She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

To Be of Use

Marge Piercy

Born in Detroit, Michigan, in the midst of the Great Depression, Marge Piercy (b. 1936) is an American poet and novelist, perhaps most famous for her New York Times best-selling novel Gone to Soldiers (1988). The first in her family to attend college, Piercy published her first book of poems in 1968. Since then, she has authored 15 novels, a play, and 17 volumes of poetry. In this poem, first published in a volume of the same name in 1973, Piercy suggests how people work is as important as what they do.