Marge Piercy writes about
THE TWELVE-SPOKED WHEEL FLASHING

"As I cannot separate the personal and political in my life, as I will not separate emotional and intellectual judgment and experience but try to weld them, as I go back and forth from the vital dying city with its wars of plunder to the vital dying country with its wars of plunder, I have tried to shape this book as a growth ring, the record of a year. The year is a wheel that turns but does not return us to where we were. An issue is as real to me as the apples on my trees, and that they sometimes have worms in them is political action, as is loving, as is talking, as is shaping these poems from the energy that comes through me from and for so many people, whose lives cross and touch, as we struggle enmeshed, sometimes blind and sometimes seeing and sometimes seeing each other."