Dearly: New Poems

Written by Margaret Atwood

Narrated by Margaret Atwood

A new book of poetry from internationally acclaimed, award-winning and bestselling author Margaret Atwood

In Dearly, Margaret Atwood’s first collection of poetry in over a decade, Atwood addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature and - zombies. Her new poetry is introspective and personal in tone, but wide-ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived.

While many are familiar with Margaret Atwood’s fiction—including her groundbreaking and bestselling novels The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, Oryx and Crake, among others—she has, from the beginning of her career, been one of our most significant contemporary poets. And she is one of the very few writers equally accomplished in fiction and poetry.  This collection is a stunning achievement that will be appreciated by fans of her novels and poetry readers alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Nov 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9780063032583

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood (Ottawa, 1939) es una de las escritoras más prestigiosas del panorama internacional. Autora prolífica traducida a más de cuarenta idiomas, ha practicado todos los géneros literarios. Entre su amplia producción destacan las novelas Por último, el corazón, Alias Grace, El cuento de la criada, Los testamentos, Oryx y Crake, El año del Diluvio, Maddaddam, Ojode gato y El asesino ciego, las colecciones de relatos Nueve cuentos malvados y Perdidas en el bosque, los ensayos Penélope y las doce criadas y Cuestiones candentes y el libro de memorias Libro de mis vidas, todos ellos publicados por Salamandra. Ha recibido, entre otros, el Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras, el Governor General's Award, la Orden de las Artes y las Letras, el Premio Booker (en dos ocasiones), el Premio Montale, el Premio Nelly Sachs, el Premio Giller, el Premio Literario del National Arts Club, el Premio Internacional Franz Kafka y el Premio de la Paz del Gremio de Libreros Alemanes.

Reviews for Dearly

[monikgtr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I want to start by saying that I don't usually read poetry and that when I do, I'm left with the feeling that I didn't get it. Having said that... I really liked this book, which I heard narrated by Atwood herself. It was lovely, relatable... It made me chuckle and go "yup, been there!".
My favorite poems were the one about cats, Aliens, and Dearly.

[Walter Malcom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Almost everything?
Nothing wasted. And I
I never read poetry.

[Ella Gusgita · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

it's beautiful and heartfelt. i always love margaret atwood's style. she doesn't use much of flourish difficult words and difficult metaphors but it's still beautiful. and to the fact she is the one herself who reads all the poems, i feel more connected with her and her poems.

[Jillian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Margaret Atwood’s poems are better off to be studied in a class instead of me reading them on my own.

[Wendy Winn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I listened to it twice in a row, that’s how much I loved it. And I am not done yet. There will be a third and forth. So fresh, so human, so imaginative, so funny and sad and everything you want in life and poetry.

[Sandra Sealy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Margaret Atwood obviously understands crafting poetry with no wasted words and master storytelling.
I love the imagery and ostensible simplicity of messages.

[aug3zimm-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A bit uneven for me. Some poems were on topics too mundane for me to really sink into. Others were darkly humorous. A few gave me an enjoyable WTF feeling (I do like that feeling). And a handful were beautifully touching and personal without being narcissistic (a problem I had with the last poetry book I read). There were a half a dozen little bits that I found especially moving but part five is probably the only section I can see wanting to revisit (if I ever want to depress myself for whatever reason). I’m not sorry I read this but I don’t think I’ll be passing it on to anyone else.

[wanderlustlover_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Winter 2020 (December);

I stalked and then preordered this from the second I heard that after two decades Atwood was releasing a new poetry book. This year took me a little while to get to reading it, after the book arrived, but I decided to make sure to finish out before the year ended and it was absolutely worth it. I loved every poem in this book and it was so moving to listen to her reading her own poetry, using emphasis and softness where she meant them to be.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A selection of poems written and read by Margaret Atwood. This has the feel of a collection written late in life, there is a sense of the passing of years, of a handing on of responsibility and grief at loss. And yet there is also vibrancy in here, there is anger at the state of the world and what we have done to our planet and a railing at the body;s inability to carry on when the mind is willing. Divided into 5 themed section, the last is the most obviously regretful, but that is where the love lives. The Invisible Man particularly. While told at a sedate pace, I wonder if reading these and being able to mull over each one would have made for an even more satisfactory reading experience.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This enjoyable but melancholy collection of Atwood's poetry features mostly short lines which I generally prefer. An interesting poem group offered thoughts on murdered sisters. I wondered what inspired these poems. She also offered a series of poems about environmental dangers, particular plastic. Many poems reflected on the past. The poem describing to a younger generation how Polaroid cameras worked amused me. I still remember the awe I had as a child watching those photos develop right before my eyes.

[donnamariemerritt · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Were some verses and lines written well? It's Margaret Atwood, so of course. Overall, however, the poems were too depressing. I couldn't get into it.

[jphamilton-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Other than a few favorites, I don’t often buy poetry collections in hardcover, but after watching some charming interviews with Margaret Atwood about her new collection, I took the leap. I almost always find her mind and her writing creative and interesting, but I didn’t find her poetry especially engaging. Her poetic images are good and her writing is both playful and serious, but I didn’t feel a strong personal connection with many of her poems. Maybe on my second reading of the collection, familiarity will pull me into her poetry.

[susan0316 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Many years ago when I was in college, I enjoyed reading poetry but in the years since, I've read very little poetry. This book has changed my mind. I loved it. Like with any collection, some poems were just ok but the majority of these were fantastic and I really enjoyed reading them. Most of the poems are short and Atwood has chosen every word carefully to help not only the cadence of the poem but more importantly the underlying theme. Some of the poems made me smile and some of them made me cry but most of them made me think and feel. I was gifted this book in ebook format but plan to buy a copy in hardcover so that I can keep it on my bookshelf and read some of the poems over and over.

[browner56 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The artist, gently aging, looks back on her life so far and what does she see? Memories mostly, both precious and painful, of the small moments and the big events that have shaped her existence. Departing from the narrative formats by which most readers are likely to know her work, she chooses to express her reminiscences and messages through poetry. That turns out to be the perfect vehicle for the concise and introspective nature of the whole endeavor, even if it requires a little more effort from those of us who are unaccustomed to the genre.

In Dearly, Margaret Atwood offers more than five dozen (depending on how you choose to count some of the stanzas) short poems on subjects such as the tribulations of getting older and the pain of memory loss in loved ones, changes in our natural world, gender roles, animal rights, and heartbreaking acts of violence. These are clearly topics the author is passionate about and she brings a forceful and thoughtful approach to addressing them all, which is exactly what you would expect from one of our greatest living writers. What I did not expect was to be so moved by her poetry instead of by the more familiar channel of her long-form fiction.

While each of the poems in the volume stands on its own merit, I definitely had several favorites, including ‘Late Poems’, ‘Salt, ‘Souvenirs’, ‘Betrayal’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Songs for Murdered Sisters’, ‘Zombie’, ‘Invisible Man’, and ‘Blackberries’, to name a few. I was quite struck by just how powerful and personal some of these verses were, although I have to confess that it was not until I read them for a second time that I felt their real force. Of course, that is my shortcoming and not the author’s; you really cannot read poetry at the same pace or in the same way that your read fiction, which is something I had to remind myself of repeatedly. Still, for both Atwood devotees and those new to her work, Dearly is a book that merits attention.