Sherrill Grace > Quotes

“Most of the poems in the collection focus upon the tension between opposites, whether male/female, order / chaos, day/night, rooms/open spaces, or the larger polarities of stasis and movement, self and other. “Journey to the Interior” explores the labyrinth of the self. It is as if the speaker in the earlier poems, having found escape from circle games impossible, has withdrawn into the self only to discover that she is enclosed in the final, most dangerous circle: “it is easier for me to lose my way/forever here, than in other landscapes”. The alternative is to abandon the egocentric self. In “Journey to the Interior”, Atwood expands the self-as-landscape metaphor, introduced in “This Is a Photograph of Me” and appearing again in the final poems of the book, because to see the self as other, as landscape, is a possible way out of the circle.”
― Sherrill Grace

“Underlying this apparent impasse is the perception that the alteration of things will be destructive for both partners: the speaker is “transfixed/by your eyes cold blue thumbtacks”. But she also knows that “there is no joy” in the game, and that she wants “the circle/ broken”, regardless of the cost.”
― Sherrill Grace

“Also characteristic is the spareness of the punctuation (except for parentheses), the controlled patterning of the lines and section breaks. Thematically, Atwood here explores many of the concerns that have continued to intrigue her: the traps of reality, myth, language, and the pernicious roles we play, the cage of the self, and above all, the nature of human perception.”
― Sherrill Grace

“In The Circle Game, Margaret Atwood explores the fallibility of human perception and the concomitant dangers of the egocentric self. Whether in our use of language, our relationships with others, or our understanding of history and place, we distort and delimit life; our eyes are “cold blue thumbtacks”, our love affairs are joyless circle games, our words are barriers, and our cities are straight lines restraining panic. Freedom, these poems proclaim, is both necessary and dangerous. Consolation is possible via touch and physical objects, but in order to find that “place of absolute/ unformed beginning” for which the speaker longs in “Migration: C.P.R.”, we must return ourselves to fragments, bones, and salt seas.”
― Sherrill Grace