Selected Poems

Margaret Atwood holds up a knife. She flashes it in the light of the reader. She traces it along the flesh, and threatens violence, but she never throws the knife, nor does she inflict a wound. Occasionally a drop will surface, perhaps this is her intent, perhaps it isn't, perhaps it was the reader's pulling of her tool too close. This vacillation between whether or not the cut was meant or merely the idea of the cut is precisely where Atwood' poetry succeeds. Violence is inherent in the world, it is natural, it can be gruesome, blunt and bloody, or simple, quiet and clean. This is the loom upon which Atwood weaves. In her Selected Poems 1965-1975 we find a tapestry containing all possible combinations of these facets of violence. Throughout we find drowned sons and fires, the blood of animals and humans, menacing, inner and outer warfare, revolts, rebellions. In Departures From The Bush the poem begins after a fire that has `erased' a bush, and the eventual occupation of said bush by animals, the fear involved in that occupation, the bareness of the limbs, the strange glowing eyes of the creatures that have made the burnt bush their home. In The Animals Of That Country there are images of a slain bull, wolves looming in the thick forests and finally a statement on the lack of elegance in death, especially in the deaths of the nameless. There is also the slow violence of withering, and aging into death or history, as in Elegy For The Giant Tortoises, and The Death Of The Other Children, both poems evoke the erosion upon a body by life. In all the selections of Circe/Mud Poems. Atwood explores the violent nature of choice, and how the very act of choosing one thing over another leaves the unchosen in a coffin. But again Atwood leaves it to the reader as to whether or not there will be blood "I made no choice, I decided nothing." And to Odysseus "will you hurt me? if you do I will fear you, if you don't I will despise you, to be feared, to be despised, theses are your choices." If violences are the consonants, then transformations are the vowels. It is these two parts that form the words of Atwood's language. She transforms herself into a mirror repeatedly, as well as a heraldic emblem in the poem of the same title, she also transforms herself into Circe as well as transforming her subjects into Cyclopes and fortresses, and hunters, as well as an entire selection of poems called Songs Of The Transformed in which she gives the reader a first person account of being among other things worms, a siren, a bull, a fox, and pig and an owl that is "the heart of a murdered woman, who took the wrong way home, who was strangled in a vacant lot and not buried, who was shot with care beneath a tree. . ." The first words of each line in the first stanza beginning with `who'. For Atwood there is always in the poem it seems a consideration of what is not being said, A nod to the universes created by the negative space, what one could do and the nature of

I first became interested in Ms. Atwood after reading one of her poems from Power Politics in a college text book: you fit into me/ like a hook into an eye/ an open eye/ a fish hook.. Selected Poems, 1965-1975 was my first purchase of her poetry, and I was not disappointed. This book is an exquisite example of Margaret Atwood's vivid imagery and examination of human relationships. One poem in this collection, titled Against Still Life, compares her relationship with a man to the frustration of not being able to touch an orange used for a still life painting. The poems cover a wide range of emotions, ranging from elaborate and lengthy to simple and brief. Each poem creates beautiful, lucid images in the mind of the reader. Her usage of biting wit and sarcasm resembles that of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, but does not offend the reader with and excessive usage of suicidal energy or feminist rage that tends to pollute the work of the aforementioned poets. Since reading Selected Poems, 1965-1975, I have read many other volumes of Margaret Atwood's poetry, but none have touched me as deeply. This is also a great example of Atwood's earlier works, many of which are not available outside of this book, as the original volumes are now out of print. I would suggest this book for lovers of other Atwood writing, including her novels and short stories. This book is a definitive asset to any collector of her works.