{"id":4318,"date":"2023-05-11T10:22:24","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T14:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/?p=4318"},"modified":"2023-05-11T10:22:25","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T14:22:25","slug":"a-poem-for-a-thursday-225","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/11\/a-poem-for-a-thursday-225\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for a Thursday #225"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Otto Gonzalez<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Marge Piercy is an American activist and writer. She has written at least 17 volumes of poetry and 15 novels as well as a play, a book of non-fiction, and a memoir. Piercy’s work focuses on feminist and social issues. She and her husband, Ira Wood, run Leapfrog Press. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The people I love the best\njump into work head first\nwithout dallying in the shallows\nand swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.\nThey seem to become natives of that element,\nthe black sleek heads of seals\nbouncing like half-submerged balls.\n\nI 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.\n\nI 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.\n\nThe work of the world is common as mud.\nBotched, it smears the hand, 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.\n\nTo be of use\nMarge Piercy<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marge Piercy is an American activist and writer. She has written at least 17 volumes of poetry and 15 novels as well as a play, a book of non-fiction, and a memoir. Piercy’s work focuses on feminist and social issues. She and her husband, Ira Wood, run Leapfrog Press. 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. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again. I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hand, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real. To be of use Marge Piercy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem-for-a-thursday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4321,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions\/4321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}