Selected Poems 2: 1976 - 1986

by Margaret Atwood

Selected Poems 2 is an essential collection from the critically acclaimed, bestselling author Margaret Atwood, tracing her work from 1976-1986. Celebrated as a major novelist throughout the English-speaking world, Margaret Atwood is also one of our most significant contemporary poets. Selected Poems 2 presents her work in the decade following 1976—important years of change and new themes in her poetry. It includes selections from Two-Headed Poems (1978), True Stories (1981), Interlunar (1984), and prose poems from Murder in the Dark  (1983). As in her fiction, Atwood ruminates on oppression and injustice and on the genders and their discontents, but beyond these surface dissonances we hear the music of compassion and fellowship and love. “Marked by an unflinching inspection of the world” ( New York Times Book Review ), Selected Poems 2 contains some of Atwood’s most extraordinary writing and is sure to captivate readers for years to come.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Classics, Feminism, Fiction, Canadian Literature, Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth ­ in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.

Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.

Reviews

[Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long ago I was reading Mary Daly's Gynocology and the weight of its content had me bouncing off the walls of my little apartment and my exploding brain. I inarticulately mentioned this to the dykes next door and one of them said hey have you read this?

Such comfort in her precise and metered rage and grief, her helpless tenderness, her wry and self-doubting devotion to love. The woman who wrote these poems was so clearly living open-eyed in the world Daly described, never denying the relationship between her warm kitchen and the warfare in the street.

Immersing oneself in mundane & horrific truth is changed in every way by companionship, by a fellow witness. I was taking it all in pretty much alone and raising a daughter. Atwood was my companion. I did not need anyone to say it would change, I just needed someone to say yes. i see it too. speak when you are ready - i am speaking now for both of us.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

amazing

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Living backwards means only / I must suffer everything twice. / Those picnics were already loss: / with the dragonflies and the clear streams halfway. / ...You did not consider me a soul / but a landscape, not even one / I recognize as mine, but foreign / and rich in curios..." (98).

Simply brilliant. Also, there are some fun tidbits of Canadian history, like how you could marry a hangman in 18th century Quebec in order to escape execution. She even makes a series of poems about snakes interesting, which is quite an accomplishment. (It's literally a noodle of an animal.) In "Aging Female Poet Sits on the Balcony," when Atwood writes, "Ah men, / why do you want / all this attention? / ...What do you have to offer me / I can't find otherwise / except humiliation?" I laughed out loud and my 5 star ranking was cemented.

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars and a bit more. I especially liked the section of poems about snakes. Who writes anything about snakes, apart from the bad press about the snake in Genesis? Margaret Atwood, great stuff, this.

[Althea · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh i finished this days ago but keep forgetting to log it. this is my first of margaret atwood’s poetry and just work in general— her vocabulary is stellar. i love her obscure use of words, her odd decisions to describe things with unconventional adjectives. so rhythmic while barely having any rhyme. masterful!

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atwood is definitely becoming one of my favorite poets. I’ve bookmarked quite a few; one of my favorite poems is “The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart”. Atwood’s diction is precise, and each poem is unique, yet at the same time the ones from the same collection belong together, and can be alone too.

[Alexa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of poems from Two-Headed Poems, True Stories and Interlunar, with seventeen new poems. Revisiting old friends is always fun! The new ones seem to cover a variety of themes on death, musings about aging and mortality (and I find it amusing that the now-mid-70s Atwood felt compelled to write these in her 40s – I can’t help wondering what her current self would have to say to that self.) There are also a lot of gruesome images here of death and war – which are not pleasant reading!

“Werewolf Movies” was very funny, did it mean to be?
Men who imagine themselves covered with fur and sprouting
fangs, why do they do that?...
...Could then freely growl, and tackle
women carrying groceries...
Dress-ups for boys, some last escape
from having to be lawyers?...

From “How to Tell One Country from Another”:
How many clothes you have to take off
before you can make love.

From “Another Elegy”:
...Even leaves are liquid
arrested. To die
is to dry, lose juice,
the sweet pulp sucked out. To enter
the time of rind and stone.

[reading is my hustle · Rating 5 out of 5]

UNCOMPROMISING because 2016-present day.


(
aria watson

[Mama K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Atwood since I read The Handmaid's Tale in its entirety in an afternoon, when I had ZERO idea who Atwood was.
In truth, I am not a big lover of poetry, but I devoured Atwood's newest collection "Dearly" in a sitting last year. In this collection, I highlighted 33 passages in this slim volume. My top 6 favorites ( I tried and tried to narrow it to 5, but I couldn't give one up) illustrate why Atwood is my go to whenever I need commentary on being human. She uses word pictures to perfectly reflect the human condition; she will soothe you with nearly-cliche images of hope, then slam you in the face with a ball peen hammer in hopelessness.
"Paper head, I prefer you because of your emptiness; from within you any word could still be said."--reminds us that anything can happen in life and we have to be ready to fill the next "emptiness"
"How can you use two languages and mean what you say in both?"--this could go a couple of ways--as a caution to not hold to hold too many ideas at once or some may not get full attention; or, that people are not always honest
"I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone's voice, Be ruthless when you have to"--this embodies the voice of both the younger, more optimistic poet, and the older more jaded poet; wanting to still be idealistic but damaged by reality
"To be lost is only a failure of memory"--the anniversary of my mother's suicide was just weeks before I read this collection; even 40 years later, i still feel pain, anger, and bewilderment, maybe even a little 'lost.' this line gutted me; it just reminded me that I'm not really 'lost,' just 'forgetting' my current life and all that's in it.
"Don't ask questions of stones. They will rightly ignore you; they have shoulders but no mouths."--maybe it's just me, but I viewed the 'stones' in this as humans jaded and hardened by life. they've had a lot of stuff to carry on their 'shoulders' and now sit mute and unwilling to speak about it anymore
"Ask the spider what is the name of God, she will tell you: God is a spider."--this one hit hard because it succinctly reminds us that we each view 'the meaning of life' through a very narrow peephole---ours.

[Yeliz Merve · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
These words are yours,
though you never said them,
you never heard them, history
breeds death but if you kill
it you kill yourself.

Margaret Atwood is one of those rare poets that strike the knifes edge balance between nature and culture brilliantly. This collection is guttural, raw, and brutal, which Atwood balances wonderfully with her precision. Although the vocabulary is distinctive, it doesn't drown under its own weight. She weaves body horrors (if you can call real-life experiences "horror" that is) within the natural world. I especially loved how nature was presented here, it isn't idyllic or naive but something frightening and powerful. She uses it in place of the feminine at times and switches up the feminized role of mother nature into its unrefined self. Her imagery especially merges the two into a beauty that is also harrowing, like,

Live burial under a moist cloth/a silver dish, the row/ of white famine bellies/swollen and taut in the oven/ lungfuls of warm breath stopped/in the heat from an old sun

I live for the way she sees the world. My favorite poem was probably the first one in the "Two-Headed Poems" since it reminded me a lot of the experiences the Natives of Canada went through with their "reformation schools" (torture chambers). I also adored the alternate version of Eurydice, one where her screams went unnoticed. And though I think they were all noteworthy, the ones that stood out for me most were:

Two-Headed Poems
The Woman Makes Peace with Her Faulty Heart
All Bread
Torture
Eurydice
The Words Continue Their Journey

You can’t live here without breathing
someone else’s air,
air that has been used to shape
these hidden words that are not yours.

[r. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the way that Atwood strips her poems down to their uncompromising voice -- a direct hit, usually, at the big organizations (stress on the ORGANs, as in phallocracy) that attempt to define us (and by us, I think she means/meant women, cis-women of the 1970s). So, yeah. She's writing the "universal" feminist outcry poems that have been vexed by their boxed in whiteness, their middle-classness, their Westerness. Oh. Wait. She's writing for me. To me. Okay.

And that's why I like her poetry -- it's direct, it's uncompromising, it's stripped, and it's sometimes mean. In "Porcupine Meditation," the poet/narrator compares herself to an aging porcupine:

I squat and stink, thinking:
peace and quiet are worth something.
Here I am, dogs,
nose me over,
go away sneezing, snouts full of barbs
hooking their way to your brain.
Now you've got some
of my pain. Much good may it do you.

See what I mean? I'd love to hook my way to someone's brain with some of my pain.

[Teddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of my favorites :

-Five Poems for Grandmothers
-Dufferin, Simcoe, Grey
-Solstice Poem
-Marsh, Hawk
-Night Poem
-Postcard
-A Women’s Issue
- Variation on the Word Sleep
-Mushrooms
-Precognition
-Georgia Beach
-No Name
-Heart Test with an Echo Chamber
-Aging Female Sits on the Balcony

One of my favorite authors writing some of my favorite poetry? Groundbreaking. This is great to read if you’ve read some of her novels, you can sense certain inspirations before they made their way into books. @marywhitney 👀

[Dargan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Margaret Atwood's imagination is a stark, violent place. And I kind of love it? The poems in this collection are about violence, sickness, death, hopelessness, pregnancy, motherhood, violation, war. This book predates The Handmaid's Tale, and I could totally see some of the seeds that grew into that story.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atwood's novels are some of my favorites. Her poems are just as good...

[Cherie Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not for the faint hearted. Margaret Atwood’s command of
language will leave you thinking long after you read the last poem.

[Lucia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. So many treasures in this collection.

[Maria Kiosi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5⭐

[T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because sometimes a poem is all it takes for me to come undone. For years and years, this poem. Always.

The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart
Margaret Atwood

I do not mean the symbol
of love, a candy shape
to decorate cakes with,
the heart that is supposed
to belong or break;

I mean this lump of muscle
that contracts like a flayed biceps,
purple-blue, with its skin of suet,
its skin of gristle, this isolate,
this caved hermit, unshelled
turtle, this one lungful of blood,
no happy plateful.

All hearts float in their own
deep oceans of no light,
wetblack and glimmering,
their four mouths gulping like fish.
Hearts are said to pound:
this is to be expected, the heart’s
regular struggle against being drowned.

But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitous,
though to twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen,

and at night it is the infra-red
third eye that remains open
while the other two are sleeping
but refuses to say what it has seen.

It is a constant pestering
in my ears, a caught moth, limping drum,
a child’s fist beating
itself against the bedsprings:
I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?

Long ago I gave up singing
to it, it will never be satisfied or lulled.
One night I will say to it:
Heart, be still,
and it will.

[Jeannette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meredith lent me this book when I was looking for poetry for Book Bingo earlier this year. I ended up reading another book I had borrowed from the library, for reasons that always sound a little insane (even to me). But having flipped through the book when she first handed it to me, I saw some things that looked interesting and I really wanted to read it. I was not disappointed.

I'm much for poetry, honestly, but nearly of all these poems felt like they had a texture or a feel to them. I could usually visualize the subject of the poem in my head, and make connections between them. I didn't always exactly enjoy them, but many of them made me think of other things, some in a new perspective, and I can appreciate that. There were a few that I'd definitely read over again, and a couple that I read aloud to my husband, just because they were interesting (and one because he was there and I like reading aloud).

I definitely would read more of Atwood's poetry.

Also, as a note to myself, I must sit down with Mere one day and ask her about her notes and underlines.

[Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

The word that I think best describes Atwood’s poetry is intimate. She lets the read inside her head and thought processes through her poetry and I love them all! Some are humorous, some a deep, some are dark and highlight her natural ability to get readers to critically think about the world around them. Overall I loved it!

[Pamela Huxtable · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to have to buy Atwood's poetry collections. It was too hard to digest as a library loan. I think Atwood is just amazing, and I am forever grateful to my college friend Judy for introducing me to her.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I teach Atwood in my classes, partly because I have to find something they can't google. I value her unsentimental approach to love.

[Sherry Chandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book used, I think, then let it lie around in “to read” stacks for a few years, until finally, when I decided on some impulse to read it this summer, it is 30 years old. These 30 years have not turned it into a relic. In fact, they are eerily relevant.

These poems cover the rise and reign of Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump is the culmination of the cultural and economic Gospel According to Ronald Reagan as interpreted by Mitch McConnell. Listen here to poem 7 of a long anthology poem, called “Two Headed Poems:”

Our leader
is a man of water
with a tinfoil skin
. . . he traps words.
They shrivel in his mouth,
he leaves the skin

. . . Why should we complain?
He is ours and us,
we made him

Or section two of “Solstice Poems”

All politicians are amateur
wars bloom in their heads like flowers
on wallpaper, pins strut in their napes.
Power is wine with lunch
and the right pinstripes

There are no amateur soldiers

(I love that line break at "flowers," turning the natural into the manufactured, three dimensions to two.)

Or from the “Woman Makes Peace with her Faulty Heart:”

How many times have I told you
The civilized world is a zoo,
not a jungle, stay in your cage.

I’ll confess that these quotations come from one book. Others have more of a twinkle, less of a wicked gleam in the eye.

I’ll confess that I pulled these quotes because they do seem prophetic, but I could pull quotes all day – lines that stop you in your tracks. It’s better, of course, to read the whole poem, the whole Selection, and weep that we did not heed their message.

[Shayla]

from "Interlunar"

and I take your hand, which is the shape a hand
would be if you existed truly.
I wish to show you the darkness
you are so afraid of.

Trust me. This darkness
is a place you can enter and be
as safe in as you are anywhere;
you can put one foot in front of the other
and believe the sides of your eyes.
Memorize it. You will know it
again in your own time.
When the appearances of things have left you,
you will still have this darkness.
Something of your own you can carry with you.

We have come to the edge;
the lake gives off its hush;
in the outer night there is a barred owl
calling, like a moth
against the ear, from the far shore
which is invisible.
The lake, vast and dimensionless,
doubles everything, the stars,
the boulders, itself, even the darkness
that you can walk so long in
it becomes light.

[and · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourites: A paper bag, The woman who could not live with her faulty heart, Five poems for dolls, Marrying the hangsman, The woman makes peace with her faulty heart, A red shirt, All bread, You begin, Postcard, Nothing, Flying inside your own body, Variation on the word sleep, Eating snake, Quattrocento, Orpheus (1), Eurydice, Orpheus (2), The words continue their journey, Aging female poet sits on the balcony, Aging female poet reads little magazines, How to tell one country from another.

[Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy many of the poems. They weren't my style.

I gave her poetry a try because I've enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale and some of her short stories. I consider her a powerful writer. However, I would say that only about 1/10th of the poems moved me in any way. I couldn't make the connection, even when I re-read them. I'd understand them, but just feel...not much.

The snake poems, overall, were my favorite. Snake Woman, You Begin and Iconography were my favorite three poems overall.

[Fifi Maier · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.”- marrying the hangman
“language, like the mouths that hold and release it, is wet and living, each
word is wrinkled with age, swollen with other words, with blood, smoothed by the numberless flesh gouges that have passed across it. “ -Two headed poems vi
“these hearts, like yours, hold snipers” x
“the civilized world is a zoo not a jungle” The woman makes peace with her faulty heart
“i’m thinking about you. what else can i say?” postcard
“who invented the word love?” a woman’s issue

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got a free copy from the library discard. She is so GOOD. Interesting look at being a woman, aging, nature, love, environment.

Contrasted with a short story of hers that I just read (cut and thirst) that was eh and imo just trying to connect to everything that’s in popular conversation these days (cancel culture specifically, in a way that seemed out of touch). A good idea for a story that I felt could have been done better.

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me preface this by saying I don't know much about poetry and have only read a little. That said, I felt that the writing was probably quite beautiful, but overall I also found it rather grim, dark, and disturbing. This is not the sort of poetry to read if you want to feel better about the state of the world or life in general.