Dear Rebekah,

Thank you for your letter, for Marge Piercy's poem,
"To Be of Use" and for Archibald MacLeish's "Eternal Autumn."
It pleases me that you should make the effort to understand
your life as it is reflected in poetry. Ultimately it is an
experience uniquely your own which endows the poem, - or any
text, - with meaning.

I read these poems as being antithetical, complementing rather
than contradicting each other. The poem about autumn is unabashedly
metaphysical. It describes the season as a pointer to a reality
beyond, a reality which each reader of the poem must discover and 
describe for her- or himself. "To Be of Use", on the other hand
is a hymn of praise to the worker who immerses him- or herself in
the common enterprise, who finds satisfaction from "going into the
fields to harvest and work in a row to pass the bags along" to
"move in a common rhythm" with his co-workers.

It's an experience which I believe I understand, which I respect,
but which I consider inferior the the effort of the artist,
who does not "work in a row to move the bags along," and who does
not "move in a common rhythm," but, more likely moves in a rhythm
of his own, because, in the words of Thoreau, he "hears a different
drummer." However, I much agree with Marge Piercy about the 
unconditional need for work. That precisely is why you may find
me building on Nantucket.

I'm pleased that your year on the farm seems to be satisfactory
for you. I hope the blue car isn't giving you any trouble. I look
forward to seeing you when next you're back in Belmont.

Jochen