Selected Poems 1: 1965-1975
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Gathered from Margaret Atwood’s work over the decade of 1965–1975, Selected Poems 1 is a lasting collection from one of our most celebrated contemporary writers.
Margaret Atwood’s early poetry garnered widespread critical recognition and helped establish her reputation as one of the most provocative modern literary talents. Selected Poems 1 draws from six volumes published early in Atwood’s career: The Circle Game (1966), which received the Governor General’s Award; The Animals in That Country (1968); Procedures for Underground (1970); The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970); Power Politics (1971); and You Are Happy (1974). In these early poems, Atwood considers the space between the cruelties of civilization and the wonders of nature, the dissonance of Canadian identity, and the line where beauty becomes sinister. With poems that are “glistening with terse, bright images, untentative, closing like a vise” (New York Times), this is an essential collection to be treasured for years to come.
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.
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Reviews for Selected Poems 1
43 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Last year, I reviewed Margaret Atwood’s latest book, a collection of short stories, The Stone Mattress. That excellent collection made me wonder why I had neglected this favorite writer in preparing reviews. I went through my collection and picked the one or two of her books I had not recently read. I settled on Selected Poems, 1965-1975.Margaret Atwood was born in Canada on November 18, 1939. She is a poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for fiction, and she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times and won once for her novel, Blind Assassin. She is also a founder of the Writers Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community. She has published 14 novels, four collections of stories, essays, and three collections of unclassifiable short prose pieces. While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she has also published fifteen books of poetry. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age. Like most of her works, these selected poems deal with the situations women are forced into solely because of their gender. One of her more horrific stories, The Handmaid’s Tale, foresees the ultimate result of confining women to a second class status. These poems frequently address that issue, although she does it with allegory and stinging humor.In a series entitled, “Circe/Mud Poems,” we find excellent examples of her power as a poet. Covering 23 pages, these 24 poems include my favorites in the collection. All are untitled as individual pieces. Atwood writes, “Through this forest / burned and sparse, the tines / of blunted trunks, charred branches // this forest of spines, antlers / the boat glides as if there is water // Red fireweed splatters the air / it is power, power / impinging, breaking over the seared rocks / in a slow collapse of petals // You move within range of my words / you land on the dry shore // You find what there is.” (201).The second, quickly gets down to business. “Men with heads of eagles / no longer interest me / or pig-men, or those who can fly / with the aid of wax and feathers // or those who take off their clothes / to reveal other clothes / or those with skins of blue leather // or those golden and flat as a coat of arms / or those with claws, the stuffed ones / with glass eyes; or those / hierarchic as greaves and steam engines. // All these I could create, manufacture, / or find easily: they swoop and thunder / around the island, common as flies, / sparks flashing, bumping into each other, // on hot days you can watch them / as they melt, come apart, / fall into the ocean / like sick gulls, dethronements, plane crashes. // I search instead for the others, / the ones left over, / the ones who have escaped from these / mythologies with barely their lives: / they have real faces and hands, they think / of themselves as / wrong somehow, they would rather be trees” (202).I frequently hear students and interviewers ask, “What does this poem mean?” The best answer is, “Whatever you think!” So read these poems and decide for yourself. No matter an individual’s answer, the power of her words, imagery, and illusions will bring a reader back to Margaret Atwood again and again. Selected Poems, 1965-1975 is an excellent place to begin exploring the mind of this amazing woman writer. 5 stars--Jim, 3/15/15
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I am a big fan of Margaret Atwood's work, but in my opinion, her poetry surpasses all of her other work. She has a gift for the art of verse and biting imagery.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I know that because of people like Margaret Atwood, and even people like Jill Scott and Black Ice that the art of poetry is not dead--what needs to be saved or savored is the art of poetry reading--to let the word wash over your soul, your heart, mind to feel those words, to seep them in--rather than think them--Poetry is Alive--Margaret Atwood is a genius. She rules words with heart, emotion, wisdom, strength and absolute control.
Book preview
Selected Poems 1 - Margaret Atwood
Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
From THE CIRCLE GAME (1966)
This is a photograph of me
After the flood, we
The city planners
Eventual Proteus
The circle game
Migration: C.P.R.
Journey to the interior
Some objects of wood and stone
Pre-amphibian
Against still life
A place: fragments
The explorers
The settlers
From THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY (1968)
The animals in that country
A foundling
The landlady
A fortification
At the tourist centre in Boston
Elegy for the giant tortoises
Roominghouse, winter
It is dangerous to read newspapers
Progressive insanities of a pioneer
Speeches for Dr Frankenstein
Backdrop addresses cowboy
I was reading a scientific article
More and more
A voice
The reincarnation of Captain Cook
Axiom
THE JOURNALS OF SUSANNA MOODIE (1970)
JOURNAL I 1832–1840
Disembarking at Quebec
Further arrivals
First neighbours
The planters
The wereman
Paths and thingscape
The two fires
Looking in a mirror
Departure from the bush
JOURNAL II 1840–1871
Death of a young son by drowning
The immigrants
Dream 1: the bush garden
1837 war in retrospect
Dream 2: Brian the still-hunter
Charivari
Dream 3: night bear which frightened cattle
The deaths of the other children
The double voice
JOURNAL III 1871–1969
Later in Belleville: career
Daguerreotype taken in old age
Wish: metamorphosis to heraldic emblem
Visit to Toronto, with companions
Solipsism while dying
Thoughts from underground
Alternate thoughts from underground
Resurrection
A bus along St Clair: December
From PROCEDURES FOR UNDERGROUND (1970)
Game after supper
Girl and horse, 1928
The small cabin
Midwinter, presolstice
Procedures for underground
Dreams of the animals
Cyclops
Three desk objects
Projected slide of an unknown soldier
Comic books vs. history (1949, 1969)
Highest altitude
A morning
A soul, geologically
Habitation
Woman skating
Younger sister, going swimming
Fishing for eel totems
Buffalo in compound: Alberta
Carrying food home in winter
From POWER POLITICS (1971)
You take my hand
She considers evading him
They eat out
After the agony
My beautiful wooden leader
You want to go back
Their attitudes differ
After all
Yes at first
We are hard
At first I was given
You refuse to own
We hear nothing
You did it
This is a mistake
Beyond truth
They are hostile nations
Spring again
I am sitting
I see you
What is it
You are the sun
Hesitations outside the door
Lying here
I look up
I can’t tell you
They were all inaccurate
From YOU ARE HAPPY (1974)
Newsreel: man and firing squad
November
Digging
Tricks with mirrors
You are happy
SONGS OF THE TRANSFORMED
Pig son
Bull song
Rat song
Crow song
Song of the worms
Owl song
Siren song
Song of the fox
Song of the hen’s head
Corpse song
CIRCE/MUD POEMS
Is/not
Eating fire
Four auguries
Head against white
There is only one of everything
Late August
Book of ancestors
About the Author
Connect with HMH
Copyright © 1976 by Margaret Atwood
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, date
Selected poems, 1965–1975
I. Title
PR9199 3 A8A6 1987 811'.54 87-17946
ISBN 0-395-40422-3 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-395-40422-5
eISBN 978-0-544-14701-0
v2.0320
Published by arrangement with Simon & Schuster
Originally published in Canada by Oxford University Press
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following.
Poems from The Animals in That Country, by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 1968 by Oxford University Press (Canadian Branch) and poems from Procedures for Underground, by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 1970 by Oxford University Press (Canadian Branch) by permission of Little, Brown and Co. in association with the Atlantic Monthly Press
Poems from The Journals of Susanna Moodie, copyright © 1976 by Oxford University Press, by permission of Oxford University Press
Poems from You Are Happy by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 1974 by Margaret Atwood by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc
Poems from Power Politics by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 1971 by Margaret Atwood. Poems from The Circle Game, copyright © 1966 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of the House of Anansi Press
From THE CIRCLE GAME (1966)
This is a photograph of me
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)
After the flood, we
We must be the only ones
left, in the mist that has risen
everywhere as well
as in these woods
I walk across the bridge
towards the safety of high ground
(the tops of the trees are like islands)
gathering the sunken
bones of the drowned mothers
(hard and round in my hands)
while the white mist washes
around my legs like water;
fish must be swimming
down in the forest beneath us,
like birds, from tree to tree
and a mile away
the city, wide and silent,
is lying lost, far undersea.
You saunter beside me, talking
of the beauty of the morning,
not even knowing
that there has been a flood,
tossing small pebbles
at random over your shoulder
into the deep thick air,
not hearing the first stumbling
footsteps of the almost-born
coming (slowly) behind us,
not seeing
the almost-human
brutal faces forming
(slowly)
out of stone.
The city planners
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;
guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air
tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows.
Eventual Proteus
I held you
through all your shifts
of structure: while your bones turned
from caved rock back to marrow,
the dangerous
fur faded to hair
the bird’s cry died in your throat
the treebark paled from your skin
the