To Be Of Use. With TLS to Galen Williams, founder of Poets and Writers, on violence against women, 9-11-73.
Piercy, Marge. To Be of Use, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1973; Wellfleet, Mass., To Galen [Williams], September 11, 1973.
8vo; illustrated by Lucia Vernarelli; black wove cloth stamped in white at the spine; black and white dust jacket; dust jacket shows mild overall wear with a 1/4" nick at the head of the spine and a closed 1/2" tear; very good.
First edition.
Together with:
Typed Letter Signed to Galen Williams, founder of Poets & Writers; single sheet, 8-1/2 x 11" typing paper folded in thirds to fit an envelope; mild age-toning; very good; acknowledging receipt of a supplement to Williams' Directory of Poets and Writers and relates an anecdote suggesting its usefulness.
The writer's third collection of poetry with a dedicatory verse as follows:
For the give and take
for the feedback between us
for all the times I have tried in saying these poems
to give back some of the energy we create together
from all the women who could never make themselves heard
the women no one would listen to
to all the women who are unlearning to not speak
and growing through listening to each other
The collection relays Piercy's strong feminist beliefs in poems such as "Barbie Doll,” "Women's Laughter," "Apron Strings," etc. "The Nuisance," for instance, begins, "I am an inconvenient woman..."—inconvenient because she loves and wants love. Direct, vibrant, energetic — like the writer herself — To Be of Use mirrors Piercy's dedication to feminism as does the letter which accompanies to Galen Williams, longtime head of the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street YM-YWHA and founder of Poets & Writers. She goes on to relate the receipt also of a disturbing poem by Terry Stokes:
But what do I get with my breakfast but that Terry Stokes poem about what fun it is to cut up women on the street. Galen, I know that if that poem was about the fun of lynching niggers instead of the fund of cutting up chicks, that you would never, never have printed it. In the same mail comes news of a friend attacked with a knife in New York City. She fought off the rapist but ended up in Bellevue with a huge knife slash and I don't know yet what kind of shape she is in. Every women's center I know is overflowing with women who have been raped, attacked, slashed, beaten. Much of what we call our literature at the moment is based on this vaunted, mythologized...hatred of women. It is so much a part of the fabric of what we call a culture that no one even objects; we have come to view the dismembered body of a woman aesthetically....I hope you will all reconsider sending out that kind of propaganda for violence against women. We hardly need more of it; we can scarcely survive what we have to deal with every day.
A great letter addressing the attitudes in our society regarding violence toward women, and with To Be of Use a fine expression of Piercy's feminism.
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