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The evolution of Margaret Atwood's poetry illuminates one of our major literary talents. Here, as in her novels, is intensity combined with sardonic detachment, and in these early poems her genius for a level stare at the ordinary is wonderfully apparent. Just as startling is her ability to contrast the everyday with the terrifying: 'Each time I hit a key/ on my electric typewriter/ speaking of peaceful trees/ another village explodes.' Her poetic voice is crystal clear, insistent, unmistakably her own. Through bus trips and postcards, wilderness and trivia, she reflects the passion and energy of a writer intensely engaged with her craft and the world. Two former collections, Poems 1965 - 1975 and Poems 1976 - 1986, are presented together with her latest collection, Morning in the Burned House, in this omnibus that represents the development of a major poet. ... Read more

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Examining Margaret Atwood's work in the context of the complex history of the "Bildungsroman", Ellen McWilliams explores how the genre has been appropriated by women writers in the second half of the twentieth century. She demonstrates that Atwood's early work - her own 'coming of age' fiction, including unpublished works as well as "The Edible Women", "Surfacing", and "Lady Oracle" - both engages with and works against the paradigms of identity which are traditionally associated with the genre. Making extensive use of unpublished manuscripts in the Atwood Collection at the University of Toronto, McWilliams uncovers influences that shaped Atwood's fashioning of identity in her early novels, paying particular attention to Atwood's preoccupation with survival as a key symbol of Canadian literature, culture, and identity. She also considers the genre's afterlife on display in "Cat's Eye", "The Robber Bride", "Alias Grace", "The Blind Assassin", and "Moral Disorder", in which the formulations of selfhood and identity in Atwood's early fiction are revisited and developed.Atwood emerges as a writer who self-consciously invokes and then undercuts the traditions of the Bildungsroman, a turn that may be read as a means of at once interrogating and perpetuating the form. McWilliams' book furthers our understanding of subjectivity in Atwood's fiction and contributes to ongoing conversations about the role gender and cultural contexts play in reframing generic boundaries. ... Read more

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When first published in 1972, Survival was considered the most startling book ever written about Canadian literature. Since then, it hascontinued to be read and taught, and it continues to shape the way Canadians look at themselves. Distinguished, provocative, and written in effervescent, compulsively readable prose, Survival is simultaneously a book of criticism, a manifesto, and a collection of personal and subversive remarks. Margaret Atwood begins by asking: “What have been the central preoccupations of our poetry and fiction?” Her answer is “survival and victims.”

Atwood applies this thesis in twelve brilliant, witty, and impassioned chapters; from Moodie to MacLennan to Blais, from Pratt to Purdy to Gibson, she lights up familiar books in wholly new perspectives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Surprised by the shortage of reviews
This book was published in 1972.I find it odd there there is only one review (preceeding my comment).Surely, the audience for whom it was intended might have something to say about the book.

A useful way to look at Canadian literature
Atwood's Survival was a seminal book for me back in the 1970's. Her theory that there are national themes in literature is very useful for studying cultures generally. The rap on the book is that she has not done athorough, scholarly job of research and tends to favour references to bookswritten by her friends or published by her publisher. I think this isunfair. She is a working writer, not an academic, and she herself notes thebook's scholarly limitations. The real fun is in taking the book's thesesand running with them yourself.

Atwood sees the essential Canadianliterary theme as the survival in the title: the survival of winter,imposed on us as Canadians by our geography and climate.

A verythought-provoking book. ... Read more

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"This collection shows that women have seen themselves as aggressive and receptive lovers, as well as philosophically sexual and loving partners, since the beginning of recorded history."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Here is the first collection of female erotic writing through the ages, and the first to reveal the form's amazing scope--as multifaceted as the sexuality of women themselves. EROTICA reveals the history of women's erotic writing and reexamines the literary expression of female sexuality. Included in this unique anthology are: Kathy Acker, Jane Austen, Anne Boleyn, Kate Copin, H.D., Radclyffe Hall, Edna O'Brien, Vita Sackville-West, Stevie Smith, Marina Tsvetayeva, Virginia Woolf, and many others.
... Read more

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Multi-faceted erotica by women for... women?
As a heterosexual but experimental woman, I hoped to find in "Erotica" sexual writing for a variety of tastes.However, what I actually found was an overwhelming tendency toward lesbian eroticism. Regardless, the writing was interesting, erotic, and broad-based, thoughthe modern writers emphasized more homosexuality than heterosexuality. Overall, the book is a great introduction to feminine erotica, andempowering to those women who feel timid about their sexuality. ... Read more

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Margaret Atwood's Power Politics first appeared in 1971, startling its audience with its vital dance of woman and man. Thirty years later it still startles, 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, unrelenting-Atwood's poetic powers are honed to perfection in this important early work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

still relevant, still potent
"you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye"

Twenty-five years after its first publication, Margaret Atwood's verses still retain their power -- her imagery still startles and disturbs; her insights are still relevant. As Sharon Thesen has written, Power Politics is "astonishing, notorious, a classic."

Atwood is better-known as the Booker-Prize-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, and Blind Assassin. Though I admire her prose, if I had to choose, I would pick the poetry. It has always seemed more immediate, more personal than her novels and short stories, while still thoughtfully composed and within Atwood's glacial tonal range. As with her prose, Atwood delights the reader with her dry wit and elegant irony, even while maintaining her cool veneer of detachment.

biting, honest, crushing, captivating... brilliant.
this is one of my favourite atwood collections, and one of the few books of poetry that i can (and want) to read every minute of the day.

atwood can capture human relationships, romantic relationships, conflict, love and the play for power all in a single stanza, line or even individual word. this collection is page after page of language so outstanding that you wish you were born from atwood's mind; no one else has the piercing insights and the flawless word choice to describe them that this woman does. if she can't blow you away, no one will.

The heart of Margaret..
The idea of poetry written about intimacy may make some readers shudder. One might think it is even a cliché, but no matter who the objective logical thinker is, they are forced to admit there's a tiny part of them who has lived and breathed a relationship of power struggle, one that might have had them seizing and submitting to the core of their innermost thoughts. Love that has left them in doubt and strengthened the self in ways that only passion can accomplish.

As Atwood writes, "....and there isn't anything I want to do about the fact that you are unhappy and sick, you aren't sick and unhappy, only alive and stuck with it." She opens up to her readers those personal witticisms we have thought towards are own "unhappy relationships" while throwing in insightful humor and wild imagery, breaking the rules of all poets with her fascinating rhythms and adjectives. If you are missing this collection of poetry from your Atwood repertoire, you are missing the heart of Margaret, her furious meticulousness and unlikely metaphors aimed into the bloodied heart of an adoration and boredom for her unlikely male worshipper. This book is an absolute must read, must own and an altogether pleasure to read.

"I raise the magic fork over the plate of beef fried rice, and plunge it into your heart." - from "They Eat Out" (Power Politics) ... Read more

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A study of the internationally renowned author whose works engage with some of the most important concerns of the 21st century, including: feminism, international terrorism, multiculturalism and global warming. ... Read more

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The appearance of Margaret Atwood's first major collection of poetry marked the beginning of a truly outstanding career in Canadian and international letters. The voice in these poems is as witty, vulnerable, direct, and incisive as we've come to know in later works. Atwood writes compassionately about the risks of love in a technological age, and the quest for identity in a universe that cannot quite be trusted. Containing many of Atwood's best and most famous poems, The Circle Game won the 1966 Governor General's Award for Poetry and rapidly attained an international reputation as a classic of modern poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Heartfelt
Every person can identify with some feeling, some remark in this collection. The poem "The Circle Game" itself is heavy with emotion, and it makes the reader feel. This is one of my favoritecollections from Atwood.

Can't see the Atwood for the trees.
Not as convincing or as powerful as her other work. ... Read more

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192 pages ... Read more

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Margaret Atwood offers an immensely influential voice in contemporary literature. Her novels have been translated into over 22 languages and are widely studied, taught and enjoyed. Her style is defined by her comic wit and willingness to experiment. Her work has ranged across several genres, from poetry to literary and cultural criticism, novels, short stories and art. This Introduction summarizes Atwood's canon, from her earliest poetry and her first novel, The Edible Woman, through The Handmaid's Tale to The Year of the Flood. Covering the full range of her work, it guides students through multiple readings of her oeuvre. It features chapters on her life and career, her literary, Canadian and feminist contexts, and how her work has been received and debated over the course of her career. With a guide to further reading and a clear, well organised structure, this book presents an engaging overview for students and readers. ... Read more

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While it is often acknowledged that Margaret Atwood's novels are rife with allusions from the oral tradition of myth, legends, fables, and fairy tales, the implications of her liberal usage bear study. The essays in this volume have been written by some of the most influential Margaret Atwood scholars internationally, each exploring Atwoodâs use of primal, indeed archetypal, narratives to illuminate her fiction and poetry. These essays interact with all types of such narratives, from fairy tales and legends, to Greek, Roman, Biblical, and pagan mythologies, to contemporary processes of myth and tale creation.And, as the works in this collection demonstrate, Atwoodâs use of myths and fairy tales allows for an abundance of old, yet fresh material for contemporary readers. By reconciling, yet by also revisioning, the archetypal motifs, characters, and narratives, Atwoodâs writings present a familiar, yet unique, reading experience. ... Read more

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This is a collection of original essays by well-known Atwood scholars offering contemporary critical readings and assessments of three well known Atwood texts. In this critical collection, well-known Atwood scholars offer original readings and critical re-evaluations of three Atwood masterpieces - "The Robber Bride", "The Blind Assassin", and "Oryx and Crake". Providing new critical assessments of Atwood's novels in language that is both lively and accessible, Margaret Atwood reveals not only Atwood's ongoing and evolving engagement with the issues that have long preoccupied her - ranging from the power politics of human relationships to a concern with human rights and the global environment - but also her increasing formal complexity as a novelist. If Atwood is a novelist who is part trickster, illusionist and con-artist, as she has often described herself, she is also, as the essays in this critical collection show, an author-ethicist with a finely honed sense of moral responsibility. This series offers up-to-date guides to the recent work of major contemporary North American authors.Written by leading scholars in the field, each book presents a range of original interpretations of three key texts published since 1990, showing how the same novel may be interpreted in a number of different ways. These informative, accessible volumes will appeal to advance undergraduate and postgraduate students, facilitating discussion and supporting close analysis of the most important contemporary American and Canadian fiction. ... Read more

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"I don't mind being 'interviewed' any more than I mind Viennese waltzing—that is, my response will depend on the agility and grace and attitude and intelligence of the other person. Some do it well, some clumsily, some step on your toes by accident, and some aim for them."—Margaret Atwood

This gathering of 21 interviews with Margaret Atwood covers a broad spectrum of topics. Beginning with Graeme Gibson's "Dissecting the Way a Writer Works" (1972), the conversations provide a forum for Atwood to talk about her own work, her career as a writer, feminism, and Canadian cultural nationalism, and to refute the autobiographical fallacy. These conversations offer what Earl Ingersoll calls "a kind of 'biography' of Margaret Atwood—the only kind of biography she is likely to sanction." Enlivened by Atwood's unfailing sense of humor, the interviews present an invaluable view of a distinguished contemporary writer at work.

From the Interviews:
"Let's not pretend that the interview will necessarily result in any absolute and blinding revelations. Interviews too are an art form; that is to say, they indulge in the science of illusion."
"I don't think you ever know how to write a book. You never know ahead of time. You start every time at zero. A former success doesn't mean that you're not going to make the most colossal failure the next time." ... Read more

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An award-winning collection of ten stories that charts the complexities of modern life and explores the strange and secret places of the heart. The gruesome discoveries of an archaeological dig in Britain find parallels in a contemporary love affair; a girl disappears without a trace and returns to haunt a collection of landscape paintings; a nineteenth-century case of mass-poisoning on the famous Franklin Expedition stirs memories of a dead friend; a woman exacts a fittingly wicked revenge on her ex-lover; a well-known journalist is betrayed by a former mentor and friend. Brilliantly rendered, disturbing, poignant at times, scathingly humorous at others, Wilderness Tips imbues the familiar world in which we live with indelible truths.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

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The Mare's Egg is a wonderful story about a gullible 19th century settler's search for a work horse -- one that isn't balky, won't nip, kick or run away -- to clear his new homestead.

A mischievous farmer leads him to believe that he can hatch a colt from a pumpkin, and sells him a bright orange "mare's egg." Indeed, he advises the immigrant that he can shorten the hatching period by spending every available moment sitting on the pumpkin, by the fire. The man sits and sits, weeks pass, the leaves fall. As winter approaches, the firewood pile begins to dwindle. The man finally realizes that the egg will not hatch. Disheartened, he disposes of it in a way that gives him fresh hope that horses can be hatched from "mare's eggs." And, no wiser from his experience, he sets off to buy another.

The text is amusing, instructive, and a pleasure to read aloud. The illustrations are brilliant, setting the humorous mood for children. Margaret Atwood's three-page afterword on the real difficulties faced by the pioneers, adds a fine historical perspective.

Customer Reviews (1)

a comfy,curl-up kind of book for you and your grandchild.
I am 46 years old and it caught the attention of the child within .Fantastic imagery!Coloful pages made for colorful imagination. I'm not onefor fantasy, fiction or likewise, but this book caught my attention on thevery first page. It is rather soothing, I'm sure I'll be reading it to mygrandchild after the discomforts of a tonsilectomy.How could you not like it ? ... Read more

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