Selected Poems: 1966-1984

by Margaret Atwood

Poems selected by the Canadian poet from her six collections record her development as an increasingly acclaimed poet and the complexity of her sensibility and vision.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Margaret Atwood is sharp, pencil sharp, and, I happen to be overly critical of poetry as a past writer. I always left her poems with wanting a little more, than analyzation.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always enjoyed Margaret Atwood's poetry. That being said, the earlier works in this collection aren't as good, and her style in general is best enjoyed sparingly. She writes of love, sex, the body, nature, and death in a way that's starkly beautiful. Some of the poems use the voice of Canadian settlers (a somewhat interesting non-fiction twist), some are written from the perspective of animals (in my opinion, the best poems in the book), but most seem to use the author's self or an alter ego as the speaker. Atwood's metaphors are creative and her language has such precision, but the angsty free verse sometimes borders on bad teen poetry. Nonetheless, Selected Poems: 1966-1984 is full of gems.

Poems that I liked:
"Pre-amphibian," "Backdrop addresses cowboy," "Paths and thingscape," "The immigrants," "Dream 1: the bush garden," "The dreams of the other children," "The double voice," "Daguerreotype taken in old age," "Three desk objects," "Woman Skating," "Carrying food home in winter," "This is a mistake," "I see you," "You are happy," "Rat song," "Song of the worms," "Circe/Mud Poems," "Late August," "Burned space," "The woman who could not live with her faulty heart," "Five poems for grandmothers," "Two-headed poems," "Nasturtium," "True stories," "Landcrab I," "Postcard," "Torture," "French colonial," "Earth," "Variations on the word sleep," "Mushrooms," "High summer," "Lesson on snakes," "The blue snake," "The words continue their journey," "Heart test with an echo chamber," "Sumacs."

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[Belinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for Power Politics

[Eddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of poems shows that Atwood is not only a master of fiction but of poetry as well.

[Valen Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Canadian, I grew up reading Margaret Atwood's amazing poetry and early novels, Surfacing, and Edible Woman. I'm not as much a fan of her later, more unwieldy stories, but these two, and her poetry are startling in their simplicity and an intimate look at a woman struggling to find her place in the feminist years of the 60's and 70's. Even if you're not an Atwood fan, check out these two books, and her early poetry.

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do like Atwood very much and her early poems are able to provide a glimpse into who she has become as a writer. She is one of the best writers out there and you can see this genius emerging in her earliest verse.