The Circle Game: Poems discussion

[Alexa]

This is Margaret Atwood's first published work, a book of poetry.

[Alexa]

This is a very thin book, just 28 poems. The back of the book says, “The appearance of Margaret Atwood’s first major collection marked the beginning of a truly outstanding career in Canadian and international letters. As in her later books…the Atwood persona in these poems is witty, vulnerable, direct and incisive; she writes compassionately of the risk of love in a technological age, the quest for identity in a universe which is not quite to be trusted. Containing many of Atwood’s best and best-known poems, THE CIRCLE GAME won the Canadian Governor-General’s Award and rapidly acquired a reputation as a classic of modern poetry.”

[Alexa]

I'm not good at reading poetry, at finding the underlying meaning, at simply listening to the words (or whatever it is that it takes!). But the fourth poem in this collection, "Evening Trainstation Before Departure," really spoke to me. I've been there and thought that (although certainly not so eloquently!).

[Alexa]

I've noticed that some of the poems have this elusive way of being funny one moment and then utterly serious the next - I'm left thinking, "oh, that was funny, but was it really, maybe it's quite sad." "Playing Cards" particularly had this effect on me.

[Erin]

I have the same troubles with poetry. I have trouble getting into it. However, I really enjoyed reading this. My favorite was After the Flood, We and Spring in the Igloo.

[Alexa]

"A Messenger" was distinctly odd yet perversely funny. The image of the random man, suspended outside her window, a candidate for marriage.

[Alexa]

For those of you following along with a different collection, I thought it might be helpful to post the contents of (at least the version I have of) The Circle Game:
This is a Photograph of Me
After the Flood, We
A Messenger
Evening Trainstation, Before Departure
An Attempted Solution for Chess Problems
In My Ravines
A Descent Through the Carpet
Playing Cards
Man with a Hook
The City Planners
On the Streets, Love
Eventual Proteus
A Meal
The Circle Game
Camera
Winter Sleepers
Spring in the Igloo
A Sibyl
Migration: C.P.R.
Journey to the Interior
Some Objects of Wood and Stone
Pre-Amphibian
Against Still Life
The Islands
Letters, Towards and Away
A Place: Fragments
The Explorers
The Settlers

[Taylor]

I have to get my hands on these collections! The library here is really really small and only has like 2 Atwood books (The fiction section is only about 4 book shelves) so I might have to check online... but I promised myself I wouldn't buy any books this year haha SIGH

[Alexa]

On about the sixth reading, a lot of these are really beginning to grow on me!

From "A Meal"

but something is hiding
...
: how it gorges on a few
unintentional
spilled crumbs of love

From "A Sibyl"

Right now
my skin is a sack of
clever tricks, five
senses ribboned like birth-
day presents unravel
in a torn web around me

From "Letters, Towards and Away"

I don't wear gratitude
well. Or hats.

What would I do with
veils and silly feathers
or a cloth rose
growing from the top of my head?

What should I do with this
peculiar furred emotion?

I think my favorite may be "Pre-Amphibian."

[Alexa]

I'm quite pleased with the review I ended up writing for this:

There is so much richness hiding under the surface of these poems – for me, determining their meaning is like trying to make out forms under murky water – just one of Atwood’s own metaphors. Journeys to the interior of countries and personalities and relationships – I read these, and I read these and I read them again, and I know I’ve only barely made out their surface outlines.