A Study Guide for Marge Piercy's "For the Young Who Want To"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Marge Piercy's "For the Young Who Want To," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535823555

Book preview

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For the Young Who Want to

Marge Piercy

1980

Introduction

Prolific novelist and poet Marge Piercy repeatedly explores the themes of usefulness, purpose, and dedication in her work. In her 1980 poem For the Young Who Want To, Piercy returns to these themes. In this short poem, Piercy examines the nature of the talent and passion an artist possesses. She contemplates the way such motivation, and the skill with which it is pursued, are evaluated by outsiders, including the world of critics and other artists, as well as the more intimate circle of the writer's friends and family. Throughout the course of the poem, Piercy's tone approaches bitterness. Her scorn for the critics of the artist is revealed through her language and imagery. Piercy is equally derisive in her attitude toward writers who seek master's degrees and who attend writing workshops as avenues toward proving their worth as an artist, for Piercy contends that such educational resources can do little to improve upon an artist's talent. Piercy then emphasizes the qualities of a true writer and praises those who work hard at writing despite the lack of appreciation for or acknowledgment of their talent or value. Aside from the six-stanza structure of the poem, the work does not employ other standard formal features and may therefore be regarded as a free verse poem.

For the Young Who Want To was published in 1980 in the journal Mother Jones, and in the poetry collection The Moon Is Always Female. It was later reprinted in another Piercy collection, Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy, in 1982.

Author Biography

A native of Detroit, Michigan, Piercy was born on March 31, 1936, to working-class parents Robert Douglas Piercy and Bert Bernice Bunnin Piercy. After attending public schools in Detroit, Piercy was accepted at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Having overcome an often troubled adolescence, Piercy studied creative writing and won the University of Michgan's prestigious literary award, the Hopwood,