Power Politics: Poems

By Margaret Atwood

A groundbreaking meditation on sexual politics, love, and human tenacity from the world-renowned pioneer of feminist writing and prophetic author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.

When it first appeared in 1971, Margaret Atwood’s Power Politics startled readers with its vital dance of woman and man. It still startles today, and is just as iconoclastic as ever. These poems occupy all at once the intimate, the political, and the mythic. Here Atwood makes us realize that we may think our own personal dichotomies are unique, but really they are multiple, universal. Clear, direct, wry, and unrelenting — Atwood’s poetic powers are honed to perfection in this seminal work from her early career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 1996
• ISBN: 9780887849121

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in more than forty-five countries, is the author of over fifty books, including fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning television series, her works include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; The MaddAddam Trilogy; The Heart Goes Last; Hag-Seed; The Testaments, which won the Booker Prize and was long-listed for the Giller Prize; and the poetry collection Dearly. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in Great Britain for her services to literature. She lives in Toronto.

Book preview

He reappears

You rose from a snowbank

with three heads, all

your hands were in your pockets

I said, haven’t

I seen you somewhere before

You pretended you were hungry

I offered you sandwiches and gingerale

but you refused

Your six eyes glowed

red, you shivered cunningly

Can’t we

be friends I said;

you didn’t answer.

You take my hand and

I’m suddenly in a bad movie,

it goes on and on and

why am I fascinated

We waltz in slow motion

through an air stale with aphorisms

we meet behind endless potted palms

you climb through the wrong windows

Other people are leaving

but I always stay till the