True Stories

by Margaret Atwood

Poems stress the need to recognize the crimes of repressive regimes, the redeeming power of friendship, the unreliability of perception, and the mystery of nature

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Feminism, Short Stories, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

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

[Matt Pitts · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terribly bleak. Even the ones about love seem to be swallowed by a world that is meaningless and suffused with death.

One, while probably true, was too awful to finish. She made me feel some real world horrors I’d prefer not to know, but there they are.

Note: some strong language in addition to terrible things

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atwood’s poems are just as dark and disturbing as her novels—And I liked them.

[Marianne Barron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Der var Atwood tilbake på plass. En nydelig diktsamling der ca halvparten er et antall ekstraordinært følelsesrike kjærlighetsdikt (som oppleves særdeles selvbiografiske, men kanskje ikke er det?) og hvor resten av diktene sentrerer seg rundt menneskets upålitelige oppfattelse av seg selv og verden rundt. Ikke minst "sannhetene" vi forteller oss selv for på en måte å gi oss selv en følelse av identitet på vår svære klode. Anbefales så absolutt. Favorittdelen - om jeg kan kalle det det - var definitivt kjærlighetsdiktene.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book a couple of decades ago and had forgotten so. When I picked it up today, knowing that I liked her poetry, I was enthused and excited to re-discover my favorite poem, "Variations on the Word Sleep." The final stanza resonates within me:
"I would like to be the air/that inhabits you for a moment/only. I would like to be that unnoticed/& that necessary." To me, this shows the elegance and simplicity of genuine love.

[Marie Charron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This discovery was a happy library accident. I didn’t even know Atwood wrote poetry. As it turns out, I love this collection. It is definitely melancholy and occasionally dark and bitter, but not a single word rings untrue. There are maybe 10 peons I will return to again and again, which is rarely the case when I read a poetry collection because I so often feel like I don’t ~ get ~ poetry. I felt like I got these poems, but more significantly that Margaret Atwood “gets” the world she’s living in when she’s writing.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Day 8 of the Sealey Challenge. The first time I have read one of Atwood's poetry collections, although I love her fiction. I really enjoyed this

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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 and 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 centre of your dream, from the grief at the centre. i would like to follow you up the long stairway again and 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 and that necessary.

[sol.x · Rating 4 out of 5]

margaret atwood's approach to language is intelligent & precise. so her poems appear neat & perhaps plain, but are cutting! this 'plainness' i think acts an anesthetic, so you might not realize at first just how sharp her poems are, or how deeply they have cut you until you look down & see all this blood.

i enjoyed this very much

[Lynette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gasp I know....only 2 stars. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Atwood. But her poems just weren’t connecting or comprehension. They were dark, which I love. They made you contemplate social standards and were feminist, which is typical of her. But I didn’t get most of them. There was beautiful imagery, and concepts that make you think, but definitely not my favorite of her works.

[Abbie Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found most of the feeling in these poems seemed a little fabricated, flush with violent images for the sake of shock factor without the sincerity of emotion to make the messages click. Excepting “Torture,” “A Women’s Issue,” “Christmas Carols,” and the prose poems, which were incredibly moving and true, the rest of this collection felt a little like a graphic blur.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this author more and more as I read more of her work beyond her novels. This is poetry how I like it with visceral, descriptions that are so precise yet leave space for you to find yourself in them.

[Sustraiak · Rating 3 out of 5]

He intentado leer poesía como si fuera una novela y claro, no funciona.
El primer poema me flipó. Pero mucho. Y después, perdí el hilo. Noto las afinidades y me gusta la voz de la autora, pero aún así. No soy yo muy de poesía, debe ser.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection dovetails nicely with Bodily Harm; she deals with many of the same themes and the same settings as she does in that novel.

I particularly enjoy "True Stories," "Landcrab I," Landcrab II," and "Spelling" (which is one of my favorites of her poems.

[Jakub Brudny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cześć z tych wierszy czytało się głosem staruszki, cześć głosem buntowniczki, czasem marzycielki. Ale nie wszystkie czytało się dobrze. Wolę jednak prozę Margaret Atwood, ale myśle ze warto rzucić okiem również na jej poezje.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raw, gripping, off-putting, mad. Margaret Atwood before she became a monetized, corporate spectacle, before Hollywood realized it could package women's anger for complacent consumption, with A List celebrities acting out pain to pay for mansions and patriarchy.

[Florencia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Zack]

Margaret Atwood is a pretty damn good poet.

[Fabián Marilao · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muchos no los entendí, pero los pocos que entendí me gustaron muchísimo.

[Shanna Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biting. Sweet. Briliant.

[Olívia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It bangs, but not quite as unforgettable as some of her other poetry pieces.

[John Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Linguistically engaging poems that play with similar feminist and environmentalist themes as her later novels.

[Lucia · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Nothing like love to put blood
back in the language"

My favourites: "True Stories", "Landcrab I", "Nothing".

[Genevieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking and raw! Excellent poetry.

[Sophie Glad · Rating 4 out of 5]

her poems have made me cry before and shocker!!!! it’s happened again. i love you margaret atwood

[m. molony · Rating 5 out of 5]

perfectly bleak.

[Sarah Lada · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, from its beginning where touch and color are questioned through shape and light to its end where death is in the height of spring, among the chicken eggs. It is a book of the author's truths; reminders that the world is just the world and it's not there to be poeticized. "...the sea is as blue/every morning as it always/was." Atwood searches for sincerity in all things. The landcrab's persistence and ignorance of its own beauty as it makes a beautiful life out of cold hardness. Atwood speaks to "you" which often seems like a child or lover that the desperate narrator keeps trying to will into existence. And that fight between that desired non-existing and the unquestionable facts of life: "There's a cooked bird, a sharp knife:/that's real/and to be dealt with," she says to "you" who are not there with her. Who she desires. "Is this really your fate,/to enter poetry and become transparent?" And how saddened I was by this line where she chooses to accept the truth of that desired non-existing thing: "Let's believe/you know your way".

And, "...the only way is through."

[Alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of poetry, spanning love, politics, and death, in a way that spoke to me much more than her previous poetry has. This feels to me like a more mature Margaret Atwood, one who writes of the vagaries of love within a committed relationship rather than the agony of young and uncertain love, one who isn’t afraid to let her political opinions show, and one who is living through the death of earlier generations. This is very, very rich in a beautiful way! This is worth returning to again and again.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good stuff when she writes about solid things like the sea and crabs and seagulls. The oft quoted line "a word after a word after a word is power" comes from a poem in this collection.

But the words poem and poetry are overused in these poems and poetry. Ars poetica works best when it's subtle, unwordy.

Her fiction is better than her poetry. But both have merit.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't a huge fan of the love poems, but it's rare for me to like those no matter how well-written, and all of these are wonderfully arranged and evocative. The center of the book was my favorite, and it made me sad that those same horrors continue around the world. She expresses the exact frustration and despair we feel at the hopelessness of making a difference.

[Kara Nichols · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry has become a stranger. I read this book hastily, wanting to be done. And in the end I did skip quite a few pages. True Stories will go back on the shelf and who knows, maybe one day I will reconnect with it. For now, I remain unmoved.