Morning in the Burned House: Poems

I found this book very very dark and depressing, so beware.

I've no other way to describe her poetry than powerful. I find her novels to be hit or miss, but this book of poetry is a big hit. The imagery is vivid and visceral. And beautiful. This is one of my favorites and my copy is well worn.

Margaret Atwood has once again delivered a simply wonderful collection of her works. Being an avid reader of her work I delight in each new book she puts out. Her writing is so real one can almost feel, touch, taste, or be wherever she is writing about. There is a maturity and higher level of writing expertise that she possesses. I would almost dare to say she is a class of her own. An excellent book. I look forward to more in the future! Dorothy Krusky Author The Chrismas Cat - A Child's Christmas Story 2005 Life's Ride - A Journal of Poems 2007

An avid poetry reader and writer, I was introduced to the sparklingly new and innovative metaphors found in Atwood's book, MORNING IN A BURNED HOUSE, by a teacher. The poems certainly illuminate the ancient hidden core of individuals that yearns to beleive in something greater and more powerful...the human spirit. A great addition to a poetry library. Profoundly clear and imaginative.

This book is very aptly titled. The poems feel like waking up in a pile of cinders that used to be a house. Not sad really. Just sort of empty. As if everything has been reduced to stark facts with a few flowers sprouting here and there out of the ashes. There is something profoundly touching about these poems. They do an amazing job of conveying the spent feeling after the huge emotional turmoil of losing a parent. One line from the book that runs through my head sometimes: "After a pause, she says--he hears her say--'I love you like salt.'"

Margaret Atwood is an unnerving poet. The poems from her latest collection, Morning in the Burned House, slip into the dark spaces of the heart and probe the truths hidden there with a surgeon's calm attention and impersonal compassion. Nothing frightens off her surgical pen. And, to stretch the metaphor, there are the same displays of black, laconic humour with which every surgical team challenges death to another round. While many of the poems maintain a cool detachment, more or less amused, Atwood is equally adept at embracing the intensely personal with both love or anger. The most poignant poems in this collection deal with the death of the poet's father - and indeed, as the title of this collection suggests, a sense of loss is at the heart of many of these poems. Atwood's poetic vision of the world is often sharp and bleak. She speaks of this in "Owl Burning" when she writes, "You have soft feet./You don't know what it's like/so close to bedrock'. This is contemporary poetry at its rock hardest - and it's most memorable.