To Be Of Use

“To Be of Use” is written without regular form or meter. Lineation is uneven. Construction is based off the division of lines into four stanzas, which are irregular in length. The stanzas compare different kinds of workers to swimmers and seals, oxen, field harvesters, and vessels that hold important items. Piercy uses vivid imagery, particularly that of physical movement, to convey the importance of useful work.

In the Introduction of Circles on the Water, Piercy discusses her poetic use of meter and rhyme, stating she has used “a very long line, a very short line, in a line that hovers around iambic pentameter or tetrameter, in verse paragraphs, in undifferentiated columns, in stanzas” (xv). This shows her awareness of formal schemes, and her choice not to use them in her poetry (at least in this collection). She also notes that “if [she] rhymes, [she] mostly do[es] so in the center of lines rather than on the end, where to my ear it sticks out, and chimes” (xv). Such internal off-rhyme, or simply similar assonance, is used in “To Be of Use,” particularly in lines like: