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Interlunar
103 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
7 people are currently reading
645 people want to read
About the author
Margaret Atwood
664 books89.3k followersMargaret 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 17, 2025
‘A peach in boiling water.
This is a domestic image.
Try: soft moon with the rind off.
The more I go on the less it's
anyone's fault, especially not
yours, who got neediness done to you
decades ago, and the doctor
doesn't stop to ask why your
blood and egg white is coming
out over the floor but shoves it back in
and calls for a suture. Which is what
I'm doing, though all that mending to keep things
together and smooth ruined my eyes
so at the end I could see only
the shift between light and dark, and you were
light at first and then dark
and then light and then dark, and I wanted it
to be light all the time, as in religious
postcards, or the arctic circle.
Is this intolerance? Am I
non-human? Is it greed for some
stupid absolute, some zero,
that takes my skin off
like this and makes your unsaid
words flare blue with terror? Do I prefer
the airless blaze of outer
space to men, even the beautiful ones?’
from 'Valediction, Intergalactic'
This is a domestic image.
Try: soft moon with the rind off.
The more I go on the less it's
anyone's fault, especially not
yours, who got neediness done to you
decades ago, and the doctor
doesn't stop to ask why your
blood and egg white is coming
out over the floor but shoves it back in
and calls for a suture. Which is what
I'm doing, though all that mending to keep things
together and smooth ruined my eyes
so at the end I could see only
the shift between light and dark, and you were
light at first and then dark
and then light and then dark, and I wanted it
to be light all the time, as in religious
postcards, or the arctic circle.
Is this intolerance? Am I
non-human? Is it greed for some
stupid absolute, some zero,
that takes my skin off
like this and makes your unsaid
words flare blue with terror? Do I prefer
the airless blaze of outer
space to men, even the beautiful ones?’
from 'Valediction, Intergalactic'
November 27, 2024
Some familiar Atwood elements in this volume, including death, mythology, nature, and stays at a lake house; you’ll even recognize a couple of her other works in poem titles “The Robber Bridegroom” and “The Burned House.”
“A Holiday” imagines a mother–daughter camping vacation presaging a postapocalyptic struggle for survival: “This could be where we / end up, learning the minimal / with maybe no tree, no rain, / no shelter, no roast carcasses / of animals to renew us … So far we do it / for fun.”
As in her later collection The Door, portals and thresholds are of key importance. “Doorway” intones, “November is the month of entrance, / month of descent. Which has passed easily, / which has been lenient with me this year. / Nobody’s blood on the floor.” There are menace and melancholy here. But as “Orpheus (2)” suggests at its close, art can be an ongoing act of resistance: “To sing is either praise / or defiance. Praise is defiance.” I do recommend Atwood’s poetry if you haven’t tried it before, even if you’re not typically a poetry reader. Her poems are concrete and forceful, driven by imagery and voice; not as abstract as you might fear.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
“A Holiday” imagines a mother–daughter camping vacation presaging a postapocalyptic struggle for survival: “This could be where we / end up, learning the minimal / with maybe no tree, no rain, / no shelter, no roast carcasses / of animals to renew us … So far we do it / for fun.”
As in her later collection The Door, portals and thresholds are of key importance. “Doorway” intones, “November is the month of entrance, / month of descent. Which has passed easily, / which has been lenient with me this year. / Nobody’s blood on the floor.” There are menace and melancholy here. But as “Orpheus (2)” suggests at its close, art can be an ongoing act of resistance: “To sing is either praise / or defiance. Praise is defiance.” I do recommend Atwood’s poetry if you haven’t tried it before, even if you’re not typically a poetry reader. Her poems are concrete and forceful, driven by imagery and voice; not as abstract as you might fear.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
September 7, 2015
The first part of this, “Snake Poems,” was quite accessible and quite interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. Then things started getting weird – all sorts of mythological and supernatural voices – yet through my discomfort I kept finding little pieces here and there that spoke to me. This just makes it more clear that poetry isn’t meant to be read, but to be savored, to be rolled around on the tongue, to be put down and come back to over and over again – and ultimately meant to be bought and cherished and read and re-read, not borrowed from a library that keeps insisting they want their books back after just a few weeks! She’s definitely stretching my mind!
February 17, 2021
God do I love Atwood's poetry. I had been looking for this book for ages before finally finding a library copy because it is one of her less-circulated collections, and the anthologies of her selected poetry don't include all the works in this book.
I am giving this 4.5 stars, really. The first part, "Snake Poems" focuses on the theme of the snake to explore divinity, the human condition, and womanhood; it contains some of the best poetry I have read. Likewise, the second part, "Interlunar", although slightly more abstruse contained such an insular quality, such strong emotive power that even if you didn't "understand" the poem entirely the first reading (or ever), Atwood leaves you with a feeling, an idea, and a lonely peace. The period between the old and new moons is an interlunar span, a time when the moon is unseen. The sense of an interlunar darkness that leaves you with your own self, your own introspection, is, I think, captured very well by this part of the book.
This is a collection I know I will revisit again and again, as with all of Atwood's works.
I am giving this 4.5 stars, really. The first part, "Snake Poems" focuses on the theme of the snake to explore divinity, the human condition, and womanhood; it contains some of the best poetry I have read. Likewise, the second part, "Interlunar", although slightly more abstruse contained such an insular quality, such strong emotive power that even if you didn't "understand" the poem entirely the first reading (or ever), Atwood leaves you with a feeling, an idea, and a lonely peace. The period between the old and new moons is an interlunar span, a time when the moon is unseen. The sense of an interlunar darkness that leaves you with your own self, your own introspection, is, I think, captured very well by this part of the book.
This is a collection I know I will revisit again and again, as with all of Atwood's works.
April 5, 2010
'Grief is to want more.
What use is moonlight?
I reach into it, fingers open,
and my hand is silvered
and blessed, and comes back to me holding nothing.'
What use is moonlight?
I reach into it, fingers open,
and my hand is silvered
and blessed, and comes back to me holding nothing.'
April 17, 2025
Con esta lectura cumplí mi meta de leer en inglés. No avanzo todo lo rápido que quisiera pero es viable y puedo seguir incursionado en el idioma.
September 29, 2021
This book contains one of my favorite poems - Interlunar - so how can I not give it 5 stars?
Her writing is complex: lush, spare and multi-layered.
Her writing is complex: lush, spare and multi-layered.
January 27, 2022
O snake, you are an argument
for poetry:
a shift among dry leaves
when there is no wind,
a thin line moving through
that which is not
time, creating time,
a voice from the dead, oblique
and silent. A movement
from left to right,
a vanishing. Prophet under a stone.
I know you're there
even when I can't see you
I see the trail you make
in the blank sand, in the morning
I see the point
of intersection, the whiplash
across the eye. I see the kill.
O long word, cold-blooded and perfect
* * *
I seem to myself to be without power.
To have the power of waiting merely.
Waiting to be told what to say.
But who will tell me?
November is the month of entrance,
month of descent. Which has passed easily,
which has been lenient with me this year.
Nobody's blood on the floor.
My arm lies across this oak desk
in the fading sunlight of four o'clock,
the skin arming, alive still,
the hand unspoken.
Through the window
below the half-lowered blind, there are
the herbs frost-killed in their boxes,
life retreating to the roots;
beyond them, the rubbishy laneway
owned by nobody.
Where all power is either spent of potential.
Power of the grey stone
resting inert, not shaping itself.
Power of the murdered girl's
bone in the stream, not yet a flute.
Power of a door unopened.
* * *
He would like not to kill. He would like
what he imagines other men have,
instead of this red compulsion. Why do the women
fail him and die badly? He would like to kill them gently,
finger by finger and with great tenderness, so that
at the end they would melt into him
with gratitude for his skill and the final pleasure
he still believes he could bring them
if only they would accept him,
but they scream too much and make him angry.
Then he goes for the soul, rummaging
in their flesh for it, despotic with self-pity,
hunting among the nerves and the shards
of their faces for the one thing
he needs to live, and lost
back there in the poplar and spruce forest
in the watery moonlight, where his young bride,
pale but only a little frightened,
her hands glimmering with his own approaching
death, gropes her way towards him
along the obscure path, from white stone
to white stone, ignorant and singing,
dreaming of him as he is.
* * *
What can I offer you, my hands held open,
empty except for my hands?
There is nothing to be afraid of,
you don't need my blessing.
As for the pigeons and the cedars
fading at dusk and emerging in early morning,
they can get along maybe
even better without me noticing them.
Coming back from a long illness
you can see how the white cup, the nasturtiums
on the porch, everything shines
not flagrantly as it did during your fever
but only the way it does.
This is the one thing I wanted to give you,
this quiet shining
which is a constant entering,
a going into
* * *
Darkness waits apart from any occasion for it;
like sorrow it is always available.
This is only one kind,
the kind in which there are stars
above the leaves, brilliant as steel nails
and countless and without regard.
We are walking together
on dead wet leaves in the intermoon
among the looming nocturnal rocks
which would be pinkish grey
in daylight, gnawed and softened
by moss and ferns, which would be green,
in the must fresh yeast smell
of trees rotting, earth returning
itself to itself
and I take your hand, which is the shape a hand
would be if you existed truly.
I wish to show you the darkness
you are so afraid of.
Trust me. This darkness
is a place you can enter and be
as safe in as you are anywhere;
you can put one foot in front of the other
and believe the sides of your eyes.
Memorize it. You will know it
again in your own time.
When the appearance of things have left you,
you will still have this darkness.
[Something of your own you can carry with you.
We have come to the edge:
the lake gives off its hush;
in the outer night there is a barred owl
calling, like a moth
against the ear, from the far shore
which is invisible.
The lake, vast and dimensionless,
doubles everything, the stars,
the boulders, itself, even the darkness
that you can walk so long in
it becomes light.
for poetry:
a shift among dry leaves
when there is no wind,
a thin line moving through
that which is not
time, creating time,
a voice from the dead, oblique
and silent. A movement
from left to right,
a vanishing. Prophet under a stone.
I know you're there
even when I can't see you
I see the trail you make
in the blank sand, in the morning
I see the point
of intersection, the whiplash
across the eye. I see the kill.
O long word, cold-blooded and perfect
- Psalm to Snake, pg. 17
* * *
I seem to myself to be without power.
To have the power of waiting merely.
Waiting to be told what to say.
But who will tell me?
November is the month of entrance,
month of descent. Which has passed easily,
which has been lenient with me this year.
Nobody's blood on the floor.
My arm lies across this oak desk
in the fading sunlight of four o'clock,
the skin arming, alive still,
the hand unspoken.
Through the window
below the half-lowered blind, there are
the herbs frost-killed in their boxes,
life retreating to the roots;
beyond them, the rubbishy laneway
owned by nobody.
Where all power is either spent of potential.
Power of the grey stone
resting inert, not shaping itself.
Power of the murdered girl's
bone in the stream, not yet a flute.
Power of a door unopened.
- Doorway, pg. 29
* * *
He would like not to kill. He would like
what he imagines other men have,
instead of this red compulsion. Why do the women
fail him and die badly? He would like to kill them gently,
finger by finger and with great tenderness, so that
at the end they would melt into him
with gratitude for his skill and the final pleasure
he still believes he could bring them
if only they would accept him,
but they scream too much and make him angry.
Then he goes for the soul, rummaging
in their flesh for it, despotic with self-pity,
hunting among the nerves and the shards
of their faces for the one thing
he needs to live, and lost
back there in the poplar and spruce forest
in the watery moonlight, where his young bride,
pale but only a little frightened,
her hands glimmering with his own approaching
death, gropes her way towards him
along the obscure path, from white stone
to white stone, ignorant and singing,
dreaming of him as he is.
- The Robber Bridegroom, pg. 62
* * *
What can I offer you, my hands held open,
empty except for my hands?
There is nothing to be afraid of,
you don't need my blessing.
As for the pigeons and the cedars
fading at dusk and emerging in early morning,
they can get along maybe
even better without me noticing them.
Coming back from a long illness
you can see how the white cup, the nasturtiums
on the porch, everything shines
not flagrantly as it did during your fever
but only the way it does.
This is the one thing I wanted to give you,
this quiet shining
which is a constant entering,
a going into
- The White Cup, pg. 89
* * *
Darkness waits apart from any occasion for it;
like sorrow it is always available.
This is only one kind,
the kind in which there are stars
above the leaves, brilliant as steel nails
and countless and without regard.
We are walking together
on dead wet leaves in the intermoon
among the looming nocturnal rocks
which would be pinkish grey
in daylight, gnawed and softened
by moss and ferns, which would be green,
in the must fresh yeast smell
of trees rotting, earth returning
itself to itself
and I take your hand, which is the shape a hand
would be if you existed truly.
I wish to show you the darkness
you are so afraid of.
Trust me. This darkness
is a place you can enter and be
as safe in as you are anywhere;
you can put one foot in front of the other
and believe the sides of your eyes.
Memorize it. You will know it
again in your own time.
When the appearance of things have left you,
you will still have this darkness.
[Something of your own you can carry with you.
We have come to the edge:
the lake gives off its hush;
in the outer night there is a barred owl
calling, like a moth
against the ear, from the far shore
which is invisible.
The lake, vast and dimensionless,
doubles everything, the stars,
the boulders, itself, even the darkness
that you can walk so long in
it becomes light.
- Interlunar, pg. 102-103
June 6, 2023
Interlunar had in abundance what Dearly lacked; theme, attitude, imagery and a thick thesaurus. Favourite passages:
"Now that the pain is slower I know it's there, less like being flayed than being scalded. A long moment of no breath at all and no feeling. Then layer after layer peels off. A peach in boiling water. This is a domestic image. Try: soft moon with the rind off: a bad answer to anything that gets in what you think is your way."
"All peoples are driven to the point of eating their gods after a time: it's the old greed for a plateful of outer space, that craving for darkness, the lust you feel what it does to you when your teeth meet in divinity, in the flesh, when you swallow it down and you can see with its own eyes, look out through murder."
"You do not consider me a soul, but a landscape, not even one I recognize as mine, but foreign and rich in curios: an egg of blue marble, a dried pod, a clay goddess you picked up at a stall somewhere among the dun and dust-green hills and bronze-hot sun and odd shadows, not knowing what would be protection or even the need for it then."
"I pick up the vacant shells, for which empty means killed, saving only the most perfect, not knowing who they are for."
"In the plum-couloured tent in the evening, a young woman is playing a lute, an anachronism, and singing to Genghis Khan. It is her job. It is her intention to make him feel better. Then maybe she can get some sleep and will not be murdered."
"Grief is to want more. What use is moonlight? I reach into it, fingers open, and my hand is silvered and blessed, and comes back to me holding nothing."
"We can live forever, but only from time to time."
"Now that the pain is slower I know it's there, less like being flayed than being scalded. A long moment of no breath at all and no feeling. Then layer after layer peels off. A peach in boiling water. This is a domestic image. Try: soft moon with the rind off: a bad answer to anything that gets in what you think is your way."
"All peoples are driven to the point of eating their gods after a time: it's the old greed for a plateful of outer space, that craving for darkness, the lust you feel what it does to you when your teeth meet in divinity, in the flesh, when you swallow it down and you can see with its own eyes, look out through murder."
"You do not consider me a soul, but a landscape, not even one I recognize as mine, but foreign and rich in curios: an egg of blue marble, a dried pod, a clay goddess you picked up at a stall somewhere among the dun and dust-green hills and bronze-hot sun and odd shadows, not knowing what would be protection or even the need for it then."
"I pick up the vacant shells, for which empty means killed, saving only the most perfect, not knowing who they are for."
"In the plum-couloured tent in the evening, a young woman is playing a lute, an anachronism, and singing to Genghis Khan. It is her job. It is her intention to make him feel better. Then maybe she can get some sleep and will not be murdered."
"Grief is to want more. What use is moonlight? I reach into it, fingers open, and my hand is silvered and blessed, and comes back to me holding nothing."
"We can live forever, but only from time to time."
August 13, 2023
"between the killer water and the killer sun, carried on hollow pieces of wood with the names of women, not sweethearts only but mothers, clumsy and matronly, though their ribbed bodiesare fragile as real bodies and like them also a memory, and like them also two hands held open, and like them also the last hope of safety."
Favourites: "Bedside", "Keep", "Anchorage", "A Sunday Drive", "Orpheus (1)", "Eurydice", "The Robber Bridegroom", "Orpheus (2)", "interlunar"
Favourites: "Bedside", "Keep", "Anchorage", "A Sunday Drive", "Orpheus (1)", "Eurydice", "The Robber Bridegroom", "Orpheus (2)", "interlunar"
Read
November 21, 2019“We rot inside, the doctor
said. To put a hand on another
is to touch death,
no doubt. Though there is also
this nebulous mist ofinterstellar
dust snagged by the gravity
of a few bones, mine,
but luminous:
even in the deep subarctic
of space beyond me·aning, even among
the never alive, to approach
is to shine.
I hold you as I hold
water, swimming.”
said. To put a hand on another
is to touch death,
no doubt. Though there is also
this nebulous mist ofinterstellar
dust snagged by the gravity
of a few bones, mine,
but luminous:
even in the deep subarctic
of space beyond me·aning, even among
the never alive, to approach
is to shine.
I hold you as I hold
water, swimming.”
November 11, 2021
I especially enjoyed the, quite playful, 'Snake Poems' 🐍💚
there was alot that was pretty stark and bloody (in a good way)... scenes at times visceral, and quite horrific... but also moments at times sensual, and/or delicately observed and drawn.
with a really good rhythm and dance weaving between these, and overall a balanced feeling to the collection.
there was alot that was pretty stark and bloody (in a good way)... scenes at times visceral, and quite horrific... but also moments at times sensual, and/or delicately observed and drawn.
with a really good rhythm and dance weaving between these, and overall a balanced feeling to the collection.
June 9, 2017
Suorasanaisen kauniita ja ronskia otteita, joista kaikista en saanut kiinni. Ne joista sain, uivat syvälle omaan kokemuspintaan. Tätä on parhaillaan runous - koskettaa niistä asioista, joita sinussa tarvitsee koskettaa.
October 28, 2025
“before your eyes you held steady
the image of what you wanted
me to become”
“the night wind
is moist with the smell of turned loam
and the early flowers”
most of these poems read as rough concepts, but a few were captivating! many have since been expanded into her novels
the image of what you wanted
me to become”
“the night wind
is moist with the smell of turned loam
and the early flowers”
most of these poems read as rough concepts, but a few were captivating! many have since been expanded into her novels
November 27, 2022
"the desire to be loved is the last illusion; give it up and you will be free."
April 16, 2023
Wow wow wow
January 31, 2024
one of my favourite poetry collections - so beautiful and clever
November 21, 2025
it has snakes. and feral girls. and mud. and societal critique. and forest fires. 5555 / 5 ⭐️ !!! no complaints
August 20, 2015
This collection is shot through with Atwood's confidence and striking imagery, but I found at times the poems were a little too repetitive, or loosely strung - some felt more like a grab-bag handful of concrete images thrown together, with little lucidity.
Maybe I would have felt this less if it were a shorter collection, so you could divulge more attention to each poem. It got a little oversaturated by the end.
Standouts were the first sequence of 'Snake Poems' and the poems devoted to her family camping.
Will definitely revisit.
Maybe I would have felt this less if it were a shorter collection, so you could divulge more attention to each poem. It got a little oversaturated by the end.
Standouts were the first sequence of 'Snake Poems' and the poems devoted to her family camping.
Will definitely revisit.
February 11, 2014
This collection is definitely focused on the northern hemisphere, with references to things not seen in the southern. Otherwise a nice collection of her poetry.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews