Today’s Poem<\/strong><\/p>\n“To Be of Use”
\nby Marge Piercy<\/p>\n
The people I love the best
\njump into work head first without dallying in the shallows
\nand swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
\nThey seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls.<\/p>\n
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
\nwho pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
\nwho strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
\nwho do what has to be done, again and again.<\/p>\n
I want to be with people who submerge
\nin the task, who go into the fields to harvest
\nand work in a row and pass the bags along,
\nwho are not parlor generals and field deserters
\nbut move in a common rhythm
\nwhen the food must come in or the fire be put out.<\/p>\n
The work of the world is common as mud.
\nBotched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
\nBut the thing worth doing well done
\nhas a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
\nGreek amphoras for wine or oil,
\nHopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
\nbut you know they were made to be used.
\nThe pitcher cries for water to carry
\nand a person for work that is real.<\/p>\n
From Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy. Copyright \u00a9 1982 by Marge Piercy. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.<\/h6>\n
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Marge Piercy<\/strong> was born in Detroit, Michigan. An extremely prolific writer, Piercy has published 17 volumes of poetry and 17 novels. She has also written plays, several volumes of nonfiction, a memoir, and has edited the anthology Early Ripening: American Women’s Poetry Now. Much of her work addresses themes of feminism, Marxism, and environmentalism. Piercy has also played an active role in a number of political causes, including the anti-Vietnam war movement, the women’s movement, and the resistance to the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Published:<\/strong>\u00a0Thu, 27 Apr 2023 11:58:25 +0000 by\u00a0j.eaton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In celebration of National Poetry Month, the entire campus community is invited to join the Campus Poetry Project sponsored…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-announcement-college-related"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Today’s Poem<\/strong><\/p>\n