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The Circle Game: Poems
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, such as Power Politics, Bodily Harm, and Alias Grace. 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. This beautiful new edition of The Circle Game contains the complete collection, with an introduction by Sherrill E. Grace of the University of British Columbia.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
66 people are currently reading
1483 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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January 20, 2025
Before she became a novelist known for dark visions of the future and gritty, incisive social criticisms on power and patriarchy, Margaret Atwood got her foot into the literary door as a poet. With her 1964 release of the The Circle Game, the Canadian writer’s second collection of poetry, Atwood won the the prestigious Governor’s General Award and the world began to get its early glimpse into the works of a writer who would become something of a household name in North America. A brief but brutally incisive collection, The Circle Game challenges social norms while juxtaposing ideas of perception and reality to examine the power structures and struggles inherent within. Calling for a resistance against the cyclical structures of society that trap and restrain us, championing freedom despite the cost to comfort and pushing to remove the social frames that squash nuance because ‘identity,’ she writes, is ‘something too huge and simple / for us to see,’ Atwood’s The Circle Game is a complex and rewarding little collection.
This Is a Photograph of Me
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)”
I enjoy seeing how many of Atwood’s signature themes are already at work here in her early poetry. Explorations of the oppressive structures of patriarchy and social constraints come across through rather vivid imagery and whimsical metaphors that hint at a darkness beneath. Such as in An Attempted Solution for Chess Problems with the image of the chess pieces, a seemingly innocent object is imbued with dread:
To imply a digging beneath the surface, Atwood employs asides through the use of lines contained in parenthesis that create the effect of a second layer, almost as multiple voices working in commentary on the poem. It also emphasizes the sense of duality at work within many of these poems and how much of life, she would argue, is a distraction from the truth of the matter hiding within.
There is no centre;
the centres
travel with us unseen
like our shadows
on a day when there is no sun.
While an impressive collection as a whole, the real heart of it is the titular poem (read it HERE) where all the themes collide. A rather brilliant narrative poem that solidifies Atwood’s motif of cyclical motion and the dark undercurrents of society that lurk beneath the innocuous veneer of commonplace activities, such as the children’s game of Ring Around the Rosie (a seemingly innocent rhyme that is a reference to the to plague and a reminder of inevitable death) featured in the poem.
The stanzas cycle between the children and adults before the two collide in the final stanza to emphasize them as ‘mirrors’ of one another to show the cycle of conformity and highlight the death of innocence. The children are concentrating and we ‘might mistake this / tranced movement for joy,’ and while they are moving in communal harmony each is ‘singing, but not to each other’ and begin to ignore the natural world around them to be ‘fixed on the empty moving spaces just in front of them.’ Not unlike the adult world of monotony as a cog in a capitalist machine instead of amidst nature, and the second stanza juxtaposes the children with the world of adults that is mostly ‘arguing, opening and closing drawers.’ We see the children move from innocence, into a museum that was once a fort and fixate on the guns, children tracing moats in the sand moves into the adulthood where ‘you trace me / like a country’s boundary,’ combining the romantic with a national identity emphasized by separation and barriers. The poem strikes deep and by the end the “you” of childhood is the “you” of adulthood leading the children ‘ according to / the closed rules of your games, / but there is no joy in it.’ It is unconscious, it is merely following in a cycle. Atwood shows that
It is a ‘cage of bones’, we are all caught in a trap, a self-perpetuating cycle from the cradle to the grave of conformity and abandoning the wild self and Atwood concludes that ‘I want to break the cycle.’ Such rather rebelliousness and social criticism would continue to be central to her many novels that followed and become one of the largest themes associated with her work.
‘I know
it is easier for me to lose my way
forever here, than in other landscapes.’
—from Journey to the Interior
The self as a landscape is a central image to this collection as well. As Sherrill E. Grace discusses in the introduction ‘to see the self as other, as landscape, is a possible way out of the circle’ and this theme builds in intensity as the collection progresses, much like the Circle Game would build in spiraling intensity. She urges us to break free, to not remain stuck in it. The poem Against Still Life is another that hits this theme on the head, being against the idea of stationary, being told what you see, or being told how to live your life and instead grasping life to ‘change it to / whatever I desire / it to be’ where what was once a still life of an orange is now ‘an egg / a sun / an orange moon / perhaps a skull’ because creativity and the freedom to create changes all that.
Love is an awkward word
Not what I mean and
Too much like magazine stories
In stilted dentists’
Waiting rooms.
How can anyone use it?
I’d rather say
I like your
Lean spine
Or your eyebrows
Or your shoes
But just by standing there and
Being awkward
You force me to speak
Love.
—from Letters, Towards and Away
A brief but rather powerful collection that is sometimes more like solving a puzzle than letting poetic ideas wash over you, The Circle Game is an early landmark in Margaret Atwoods career. Often dark, but with flashes of tenderness such as when an insect mops up the crumbs following meal with a lover—’how it gorges on a few / unintentional / spilled crumbs of love’—Atwood always dazzles with imagery and raises her voice in brilliant defiance. A fun little book.
3.5/5
This Is a Photograph of Me
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)”
I enjoy seeing how many of Atwood’s signature themes are already at work here in her early poetry. Explorations of the oppressive structures of patriarchy and social constraints come across through rather vivid imagery and whimsical metaphors that hint at a darkness beneath. Such as in An Attempted Solution for Chess Problems with the image of the chess pieces, a seemingly innocent object is imbued with dread:
‘The shadows of the chessmen
stretch, fall across her: she
is obsessed by history;
each wooden totem rises
like the cairn of an event.’
To imply a digging beneath the surface, Atwood employs asides through the use of lines contained in parenthesis that create the effect of a second layer, almost as multiple voices working in commentary on the poem. It also emphasizes the sense of duality at work within many of these poems and how much of life, she would argue, is a distraction from the truth of the matter hiding within.
There is no centre;
the centres
travel with us unseen
like our shadows
on a day when there is no sun.
While an impressive collection as a whole, the real heart of it is the titular poem (read it HERE) where all the themes collide. A rather brilliant narrative poem that solidifies Atwood’s motif of cyclical motion and the dark undercurrents of society that lurk beneath the innocuous veneer of commonplace activities, such as the children’s game of Ring Around the Rosie (a seemingly innocent rhyme that is a reference to the to plague and a reminder of inevitable death) featured in the poem.
The stanzas cycle between the children and adults before the two collide in the final stanza to emphasize them as ‘mirrors’ of one another to show the cycle of conformity and highlight the death of innocence. The children are concentrating and we ‘might mistake this / tranced movement for joy,’ and while they are moving in communal harmony each is ‘singing, but not to each other’ and begin to ignore the natural world around them to be ‘fixed on the empty moving spaces just in front of them.’ Not unlike the adult world of monotony as a cog in a capitalist machine instead of amidst nature, and the second stanza juxtaposes the children with the world of adults that is mostly ‘arguing, opening and closing drawers.’ We see the children move from innocence, into a museum that was once a fort and fixate on the guns, children tracing moats in the sand moves into the adulthood where ‘you trace me / like a country’s boundary,’ combining the romantic with a national identity emphasized by separation and barriers. The poem strikes deep and by the end the “you” of childhood is the “you” of adulthood leading the children ‘ according to / the closed rules of your games, / but there is no joy in it.’ It is unconscious, it is merely following in a cycle. Atwood shows that
‘that the whole point
for them
of going round and round
is (faster / slower)
going round and round,’
It is a ‘cage of bones’, we are all caught in a trap, a self-perpetuating cycle from the cradle to the grave of conformity and abandoning the wild self and Atwood concludes that ‘I want to break the cycle.’ Such rather rebelliousness and social criticism would continue to be central to her many novels that followed and become one of the largest themes associated with her work.
‘I know
it is easier for me to lose my way
forever here, than in other landscapes.’
—from Journey to the Interior
The self as a landscape is a central image to this collection as well. As Sherrill E. Grace discusses in the introduction ‘to see the self as other, as landscape, is a possible way out of the circle’ and this theme builds in intensity as the collection progresses, much like the Circle Game would build in spiraling intensity. She urges us to break free, to not remain stuck in it. The poem Against Still Life is another that hits this theme on the head, being against the idea of stationary, being told what you see, or being told how to live your life and instead grasping life to ‘change it to / whatever I desire / it to be’ where what was once a still life of an orange is now ‘an egg / a sun / an orange moon / perhaps a skull’ because creativity and the freedom to create changes all that.
Love is an awkward word
Not what I mean and
Too much like magazine stories
In stilted dentists’
Waiting rooms.
How can anyone use it?
I’d rather say
I like your
Lean spine
Or your eyebrows
Or your shoes
But just by standing there and
Being awkward
You force me to speak
Love.
—from Letters, Towards and Away
A brief but rather powerful collection that is sometimes more like solving a puzzle than letting poetic ideas wash over you, The Circle Game is an early landmark in Margaret Atwoods career. Often dark, but with flashes of tenderness such as when an insect mops up the crumbs following meal with a lover—’how it gorges on a few / unintentional / spilled crumbs of love’—Atwood always dazzles with imagery and raises her voice in brilliant defiance. A fun little book.
3.5/5
November 22, 2017
Attagirl, Atwood - 3.5 STARS
I have nothing against this style of poetry, however, this book left me feeling pretty disoriented. It's a shame because--while I appreciated certain poems--I just couldn't appreciate this collection as a whole. I will say this though, when it comes to punctuation, stanzas, and tone: Margaret Atwood gets it!
Look, I don't expect everyone to like traditional poetry like I do, and I am also quite picky which is probably why I'm not super satisfied with this. That being said, while I didn't overall enjoy Ms. Atwood's collection, her talent as a writer is commendable, which is why she has my respect. Her poetry has substance to it, while most modern poetry these days seems to be lacking this aspect. This is one of the reasons why I refuse to hop on any mainstream bandwagons that think catchy, romantic Tinder pick-up lines equals poetry, it doesn't. *cough* Atticus *cough*. I am not saying you can't enjoy someone's work that is styled like a poem but there are a lot more authentic poets out there who write beautifully that deserve recognition. Obviously, this is just my personal opinion.
Now, let me end this review on a positive note.
This particular part in An Attempted Solution for Chess Problems created quite a visual and left me with chills:
The shadows of the chessmen
stretch, fall across her: she
is obsessed by history;
each wooden totem rises
like the cairn of an event
I have nothing against this style of poetry, however, this book left me feeling pretty disoriented. It's a shame because--while I appreciated certain poems--I just couldn't appreciate this collection as a whole. I will say this though, when it comes to punctuation, stanzas, and tone: Margaret Atwood gets it!
Look, I don't expect everyone to like traditional poetry like I do, and I am also quite picky which is probably why I'm not super satisfied with this. That being said, while I didn't overall enjoy Ms. Atwood's collection, her talent as a writer is commendable, which is why she has my respect. Her poetry has substance to it, while most modern poetry these days seems to be lacking this aspect. This is one of the reasons why I refuse to hop on any mainstream bandwagons that think catchy, romantic Tinder pick-up lines equals poetry, it doesn't. *cough* Atticus *cough*. I am not saying you can't enjoy someone's work that is styled like a poem but there are a lot more authentic poets out there who write beautifully that deserve recognition. Obviously, this is just my personal opinion.
Now, let me end this review on a positive note.
This particular part in An Attempted Solution for Chess Problems created quite a visual and left me with chills:
The shadows of the chessmen
stretch, fall across her: she
is obsessed by history;
each wooden totem rises
like the cairn of an event
July 25, 2025
Has Margaret Atwood ever experienced joy?
This new Anansi Press anniversary edition of Margaret Atwood's The Circle Game begins with an introduction by Suzanne Buffam. Buffam spends much of her introduction telling you what a great poem "This is a Photograph of me" is. After spoiling the big reveal of that poem, she goes on to make a few general remarks about Atwood and poetry in general. Here's a bit of advice to readers: read "This is a Photograph of me" first -- it's the first poem in the book -- then go back and read Buffam's introduction, and finally proceed to the rest of the poems.
"This is a Photograph of me" is indeed a great poem, the best in the book, in my opinion, and worth the time I took to read the book. But aside from that, I found The Circle Game an extremely bleak experience. If Atwood has ever experienced joy, you would not figure it out from this collection.
The pronouns in many of the poems are "we" and "you". You will quickly realize that "we" is a woman and a man, and "you" is the man. These poems, collectively, are very grim. That doesn't make them bad poems, but a little of this goes a long way. After a while I was feeling a desire to move away from a clearly joyless relationship and move on to some other topic.
Your mileage may vary, of course. Poetry is a personal experience. Atwood is obviously a more than competent poet. You may find her speaking directly to something within you, as I did not.
Blog review.
This new Anansi Press anniversary edition of Margaret Atwood's The Circle Game begins with an introduction by Suzanne Buffam. Buffam spends much of her introduction telling you what a great poem "This is a Photograph of me" is. After spoiling the big reveal of that poem, she goes on to make a few general remarks about Atwood and poetry in general. Here's a bit of advice to readers: read "This is a Photograph of me" first -- it's the first poem in the book -- then go back and read Buffam's introduction, and finally proceed to the rest of the poems.
"This is a Photograph of me" is indeed a great poem, the best in the book, in my opinion, and worth the time I took to read the book. But aside from that, I found The Circle Game an extremely bleak experience. If Atwood has ever experienced joy, you would not figure it out from this collection.
The pronouns in many of the poems are "we" and "you". You will quickly realize that "we" is a woman and a man, and "you" is the man. These poems, collectively, are very grim. That doesn't make them bad poems, but a little of this goes a long way. After a while I was feeling a desire to move away from a clearly joyless relationship and move on to some other topic.
Your mileage may vary, of course. Poetry is a personal experience. Atwood is obviously a more than competent poet. You may find her speaking directly to something within you, as I did not.
Blog review.
October 18, 2022
queen of parenthesis
even though i really liked some of the poems, it has that atwood tone that i can only describe as overly detached/observational, which i only like sometimes?? idk i feel like it was perfect for half the poems but the other half were less impactful
favourites:
this is a photograph of me
evening train station, before departure
a descent through the carpet
the circle game
letters, towards and away
against still life
even though i really liked some of the poems, it has that atwood tone that i can only describe as overly detached/observational, which i only like sometimes?? idk i feel like it was perfect for half the poems but the other half were less impactful
favourites:
this is a photograph of me
evening train station, before departure
a descent through the carpet
the circle game
letters, towards and away
against still life
December 20, 2016
booo *two thumbs down* booooooo
June 8, 2016
Normally, I love Margaret Atwood but this one just gave me a headache. If you read this pace yourself, do not try to read it all in one sitting. I find that reading poetry should be done in stages, at least in my case.
April 30, 2020
"(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)"
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)"
November 9, 2014
Why can't I appreciate poetry??? ugh.
July 2, 2024
I did really enjoy some of this (Man with a Hook, The Islands, and The Explorers are 5/5), but overall it made me think harder than I'd like to when reading poetry. Instead of making me think deeper, I found myself having to think pretty hard just to hang on to what Atwood was trying to get across. Whether that's my current mood or just a personal preference, I'm not sure.
Read
December 11, 2023“In spite of our famines
it keeps itself alive
: how it gorges on a few
unintentional
spilled crumbs of love”
—from “A Meal”
it keeps itself alive
: how it gorges on a few
unintentional
spilled crumbs of love”
—from “A Meal”
November 1, 2019
I really enjoyed the title poem. There were also several that were about travelling west by train, across the prairies into the mountains. I think then there’s one set perhaps in a Stanley Park in Vancouver, amongst the totem poles. Having done that trip, I really enjoyed those. Generally I found them very symbolic, which is something I often find difficult about poetry.
April 29, 2020
While I've enjoyed much of Margaret Atwood's fiction, this volume of poetry left me feeling mainly puzzled and disoriented. Many of the poems interested me, but I didn't feel that I could relate or understand. I'm fairly sure the fault lay with this reader.
March 24, 2015
I initially rated this 3 stars, but given the number of poems I photocopied out of the book I am upping it to 4 stars.
Read
January 23, 2017Re-read this collection on the bus ride to the Women's March on Washington!
June 25, 2021
I don't understand the parantheses, but I'm sure I will, one day.
March 21, 2017
I am not really one that appreciates poetry on the whole, though now and then I'll read something I like. I didn't really like this collection though I thought, it being Margaret Atwood, that I would. There's a fairly long foreward that explains the meaning of a number of the poems, what the writer is saying, how it fits the theme of the title of the book. I reckon if it has to be explained to me, I'm not going to "get" it. And I didn't. I'm admitting the fault lies entirely on me. I would read a poem, sort of understand where it was going and then, wait, what? The next line would be completely off the wall and make no sense and it ruined the rest of it. I don't get that you can write a pretty sentence, put the words on different lines and it's now a poem. Apparently, how it's broken up into lines says something. *shrugs* It's kind of like modern art. The artist might say it means this but you really can make it mean anything you want. Vague and esoteric, symbolism and metaphor, it doesn't mix with the way my brain works. I don't insist that a poem rhyme but it has to make a bit of sense to me. These just confused me for the most part.
April 4, 2017
I'm still not sure I "get" poetry. But this wasn't a bad read. There were a few bits I really liked, and it wasn't too hard to get through. I'd probably need to spend more time analysing the poems than I did.
This was one of my favourite bits, from "Some Objects of Wood and Stone"
"and when we spoke /
we spoke /
the sounds of our voices fell /
into the air single and /
solid and rounded and really /
there /
and then dulled, and then like sounds /
gone, a fistful of gathered /
pebbles there was no point /
in taking home, dropped on a beachful /
of other coloured pebbles"
This was one of my favourite bits, from "Some Objects of Wood and Stone"
"and when we spoke /
we spoke /
the sounds of our voices fell /
into the air single and /
solid and rounded and really /
there /
and then dulled, and then like sounds /
gone, a fistful of gathered /
pebbles there was no point /
in taking home, dropped on a beachful /
of other coloured pebbles"
December 17, 2020
not perfect, but mountains of potential. im excited to read some of her later poetry.
and how about this:
It is not available to us
it
is not available, I said
closing my house against you.
I live in a universe mostly paper.
I make tents
from cancelled stamps.
Letters
are permitted but
don't touch me, I'd crumple
I said
everything depends on you
staying away.
and how about this:
It is not available to us
it
is not available, I said
closing my house against you.
I live in a universe mostly paper.
I make tents
from cancelled stamps.
Letters
are permitted but
don't touch me, I'd crumple
I said
everything depends on you
staying away.
February 24, 2023
Atwood’s writing is very beautiful. She is extremely creative in using various analogies and metaphors throughout her work. However, I found it hard to follow the main points/ themes found in this poetry collection
August 16, 2017
Variabel denne. Noen dikt er absolutt nydelige. Andre, nokså ubegripelige. En samling som kan og bør leses flere ganger.
January 29, 2020
It's collection of poems, dark yet engaging metaphors.
I liked couple of poems
I liked couple of poems
September 10, 2024
That's that me depresso
Read
December 31, 2020in deze bundel is er altijd iets aan het broeien of spoken, een huis verandert in een landschap of andersom, een juist helder beeld blijkt een optische illusie. over hoe moeilijk het is om dichtbij anderen te komen, of bij jezelf. met een overvloed aan moerassen, takjes en flesjes in de vensterbank waar een orakel in huist, (en veel haakjes)
October 16, 2017
Published in 1964, this is Margaret Atwood's first commercially-published poetry collection. Her first, DOUBLE PERSEPHONE, was self-published in 1961. CIRCLE GAME explores womanhood, colonialism and indigenous peoples, environmentalism, and many other topics. The titular poem has seven parts, but Part 1 concerns a group of children who have joined hands and are going round-and-round in a circle, in a "ring around the rosie" fashion. They are singularly focused on their game, ignoring the natural world that is all around them - the grass underfoot, a nearby lake, etc. Through this, Atwood is using this game as a metaphor for modernization and its devastating impacts on the Earth's environment. The children feature in many of the other parts, and Part 7 circles back to the initial game. She continues the circle as a metaphor for the propulsion of society away from connection. She ends the poem with -
"I want to break
these bones, your prisoning rhythms
(winter,
summer)
all the glass cases,
erase all maps,
crack the protecting
eggshell of your turning
singing children:
I want the circle
broken."
"I want to break
these bones, your prisoning rhythms
(winter,
summer)
all the glass cases,
erase all maps,
crack the protecting
eggshell of your turning
singing children:
I want the circle
broken."
November 12, 2020
For my full review, please follow the link below:
https://www.bookwormadventuregirl.com...
https://www.bookwormadventuregirl.com...
February 1, 2021
My fav poem:
"Letters, Towards and Away
i
It is not available to us
it
is not available, I said
closing my hours against you.
I live in a universe
mostly paper.
I make tents
from cancelled stamps.
Letters
are permitted but
don’t touch me, I’d
crumple
I said
everything depends on you
staying away.
ii
I didn’t want you to be
visible.
How could you invade
me when
I ordered you not
to
Leave my evasions
alone
stay in the borders
I’ve drawn, I wrote, but
you twisted your own wide spaces
and made them include me.
iii
You came easily into my house
and without being asked
washed the dirty dishes,
because you don’t find
my forms of chaos,
inverted midnights
and crusted plates,
congenial:
restoring some kind of
daily normal order.
Not normal for me:
I live in a house where
beautiful clean dishes
aren’t important
enough.
iv
Love is an awkward word
Not what I mean and
too much like magazine stories
in stilted dentists’
waiting rooms.
How can anyone use it?
I’d rather say
I like your
lean spine
or your eyebrows
or your shoes
but just by standing there and
being awkward
you force me to speak
love.
v
You collapse my house of cards
merely by breathing
making other places
with your hands on wood, your
feet on sand
creating with such
generosity, mountains, distances
empty beach and rocks and sunlight
as you walk
so calmly into the sea
and returning, you
taste of salt,
and put together my own
body, another
place
for me to live
in.
vi
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?
vii
What you invented
what you
destroyed
with your transient hands
you did so gently
I didn’t notice at the time
but where is all that wall-
paper?
Now
I’m roofless:
the sky
you built for me is too
open.
Quickly,
send me some more letters."
I wonder is there somebody smarter than Atwood? I don't think so.
Another poem I liked.
On the Streets, Love
On the streets
love
these days
is a matter for
either scavengers
(turning death to life) or
(turning life
to death) for predators
(The billboard lady
with her white enamel
teeth and red
enamel claws, is after
the men
when they pass her
never guess they have brought her
to life, or that her
body’s made of cardboard, or in her
veins flows the drained
blood of their desire)
(Look, the grey man
his footsteps soft
as flannel,
glides from his poster
and the voracious women, seeing
him so trim,
edges clear as cut paper
eyes clean
and sharp as lettering,
want to own him
are you dead? are you dead?
they say, hoping )
Love, what are we to do
on the streets these days
and how am I
to know that you
and how are you to know
that I, that
we are not parts of those
people, scraps glued together
waiting for a chance
to come to life
(One day
I’ll touch the warm
flesh of your throat, and hear
a faint crackle of paper
or you, who think
that you can read my mind
from the inside out, will taste the
black ink on my tongue, and find
the fine print written
just beneath my skin.)
So beautiful...Actually my fav was This is a Photograph of me and Against Still Life oh and Camera oh and The Circle Game and A meal. yeah too many...I know.
"Letters, Towards and Away
i
It is not available to us
it
is not available, I said
closing my hours against you.
I live in a universe
mostly paper.
I make tents
from cancelled stamps.
Letters
are permitted but
don’t touch me, I’d
crumple
I said
everything depends on you
staying away.
ii
I didn’t want you to be
visible.
How could you invade
me when
I ordered you not
to
Leave my evasions
alone
stay in the borders
I’ve drawn, I wrote, but
you twisted your own wide spaces
and made them include me.
iii
You came easily into my house
and without being asked
washed the dirty dishes,
because you don’t find
my forms of chaos,
inverted midnights
and crusted plates,
congenial:
restoring some kind of
daily normal order.
Not normal for me:
I live in a house where
beautiful clean dishes
aren’t important
enough.
iv
Love is an awkward word
Not what I mean and
too much like magazine stories
in stilted dentists’
waiting rooms.
How can anyone use it?
I’d rather say
I like your
lean spine
or your eyebrows
or your shoes
but just by standing there and
being awkward
you force me to speak
love.
v
You collapse my house of cards
merely by breathing
making other places
with your hands on wood, your
feet on sand
creating with such
generosity, mountains, distances
empty beach and rocks and sunlight
as you walk
so calmly into the sea
and returning, you
taste of salt,
and put together my own
body, another
place
for me to live
in.
vi
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?
vii
What you invented
what you
destroyed
with your transient hands
you did so gently
I didn’t notice at the time
but where is all that wall-
paper?
Now
I’m roofless:
the sky
you built for me is too
open.
Quickly,
send me some more letters."
I wonder is there somebody smarter than Atwood? I don't think so.
Another poem I liked.
On the Streets, Love
On the streets
love
these days
is a matter for
either scavengers
(turning death to life) or
(turning life
to death) for predators
(The billboard lady
with her white enamel
teeth and red
enamel claws, is after
the men
when they pass her
never guess they have brought her
to life, or that her
body’s made of cardboard, or in her
veins flows the drained
blood of their desire)
(Look, the grey man
his footsteps soft
as flannel,
glides from his poster
and the voracious women, seeing
him so trim,
edges clear as cut paper
eyes clean
and sharp as lettering,
want to own him
are you dead? are you dead?
they say, hoping )
Love, what are we to do
on the streets these days
and how am I
to know that you
and how are you to know
that I, that
we are not parts of those
people, scraps glued together
waiting for a chance
to come to life
(One day
I’ll touch the warm
flesh of your throat, and hear
a faint crackle of paper
or you, who think
that you can read my mind
from the inside out, will taste the
black ink on my tongue, and find
the fine print written
just beneath my skin.)
So beautiful...Actually my fav was This is a Photograph of me and Against Still Life oh and Camera oh and The Circle Game and A meal. yeah too many...I know.
November 21, 2019
First of all, it is remarkable that Atwood was only 27 years old when this was published. Second, we got to listen to her at an author reading here in San Antonio last year and she was so intelligent, relatable, and clever. Her poetry has a sense of haunting eeriness to it at times, almost foreboding. Here are some of the poems and part of a poem that impressed me most.
The Explorers
The explorers will come in several minutes and find this island. (It is a stunted island, rocky, with room for only a few trees, a thin layer of soil; hardly bigger than a bed. That is how they’ve missed it until now) Already their boats draw near, their flags flutter, their oars push at the water.
They will be jubilant and shout, at finding that there was something they had not found before, although this island will afford not much more than a foothold: little to explore; but they will be surprised
(we can’t see them yet; we know they must be coming, because they always come several minutes too late)
(they won’t be able to tell how long we were cast away, or why, or, from these gnawed bones, which was the survivor) at the two skeletons
Letters, Towards and Away
Love is an awkward word Not what I mean and too much like magazine stories in stilted dentists’ waiting rooms. How can anyone use it? I’d rather say I like your lean spine or your eyebrows or your shoes but just by standing there and being awkward you force me to speak love.
This is a Photograph of Me
“In the background there is a lake, and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken the day after I drowned. I am in the lake, in the centre of the picture, just under the surface. It is difficult to say where precisely, or to say how large or small I am: the effect of water on light is a distortion but if you look long enough, eventually you will be able to see me.)”
The City Planners
“That is where the City Planners with the insane faces of political conspirators are scattered over unsurveyed territories, concealed from each other, each in his own private blizzard; guessing directions, they sketch transitory lines rigid as wooden borders on a wall in the white vanishing air tracing the panic of suburb order in a bland madness of snows.”
The Explorers
The explorers will come in several minutes and find this island. (It is a stunted island, rocky, with room for only a few trees, a thin layer of soil; hardly bigger than a bed. That is how they’ve missed it until now) Already their boats draw near, their flags flutter, their oars push at the water.
They will be jubilant and shout, at finding that there was something they had not found before, although this island will afford not much more than a foothold: little to explore; but they will be surprised
(we can’t see them yet; we know they must be coming, because they always come several minutes too late)
(they won’t be able to tell how long we were cast away, or why, or, from these gnawed bones, which was the survivor) at the two skeletons
Letters, Towards and Away
Love is an awkward word Not what I mean and too much like magazine stories in stilted dentists’ waiting rooms. How can anyone use it? I’d rather say I like your lean spine or your eyebrows or your shoes but just by standing there and being awkward you force me to speak love.
This is a Photograph of Me
“In the background there is a lake, and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken the day after I drowned. I am in the lake, in the centre of the picture, just under the surface. It is difficult to say where precisely, or to say how large or small I am: the effect of water on light is a distortion but if you look long enough, eventually you will be able to see me.)”
The City Planners
“That is where the City Planners with the insane faces of political conspirators are scattered over unsurveyed territories, concealed from each other, each in his own private blizzard; guessing directions, they sketch transitory lines rigid as wooden borders on a wall in the white vanishing air tracing the panic of suburb order in a bland madness of snows.”
September 4, 2016
So there’s an episode of Parks and Recreation where the main character, Leslie Knope, criticizes slam poetry because it doesn’t rhyme. She goes on to say
anything can be a slam
poem
if you say it
like this.
I agree with Leslie’s comment despite liking slam poetry. That’s not a criticism of slam poetry so much as an admission of my own limitations as a reader when it comes to poetry. I never studied poetry in an academic setting, which means I often don’t understand what a poet is trying to convey through pauses and breaks. I overlook symbols through the tangle of words. Rhythm and meter is lost on me. I mean, what’s the point of breaking up a string of words if they make better sense as a paragraph?
Sometimes I think my mind is just too literal for something like poetry.
The point I’m trying to make is that I struggled through The Circle Game. Thankfully there were poems that broke through the fog of my confusion and said something to me. Take this excerpt from Against Still Life as an example:
And it all started with an orange.
anything can be a slam
poem
if you say it
like this.
I agree with Leslie’s comment despite liking slam poetry. That’s not a criticism of slam poetry so much as an admission of my own limitations as a reader when it comes to poetry. I never studied poetry in an academic setting, which means I often don’t understand what a poet is trying to convey through pauses and breaks. I overlook symbols through the tangle of words. Rhythm and meter is lost on me. I mean, what’s the point of breaking up a string of words if they make better sense as a paragraph?
Sometimes I think my mind is just too literal for something like poetry.
The point I’m trying to make is that I struggled through The Circle Game. Thankfully there were poems that broke through the fog of my confusion and said something to me. Take this excerpt from Against Still Life as an example:
(there are mountains
inside your skull
gardens and chaos, ocean
and hurricane; certain
corners of rooms, portraits
of great-grandmothers, curtains
of a particular shade;
your deserts; your private
dinosaurs; the first
woman)
all I need to know:
tell me
everything
just as it was
from the beginning.
And it all started with an orange.
May 13, 2022
I read some Margaret Atwood poetry when I was younger and it went entirely over my head. And by younger I mean late high school into university. Still, I wanted to give it another try.
What shines about Atwood's poetry collection, to me, is not the poetry. You can see through her choice of words what a poignant writer she is, in general, but it did not suite my taste for poems.
Some of the line breaks and punctuation disrupted flow more than created it, and it would have suited her to have long wordy prose poetry lines than the small chopped up ones we get.
I'm not an expert in poetry, but this collection is an example of WHY poetry always felt out of the average Joe's reach. There's so much imagery in Atwood's poems it's hard to follow along, most of the time I can't decipher what's happening or the story being conveyed. It's too "poetic" if you know what I mean. I really enjoyed some of Atwood's construction of images, but it was more than I could handle majority of the time.
What shines about Atwood's poetry collection, to me, is not the poetry. You can see through her choice of words what a poignant writer she is, in general, but it did not suite my taste for poems.
Some of the line breaks and punctuation disrupted flow more than created it, and it would have suited her to have long wordy prose poetry lines than the small chopped up ones we get.
I'm not an expert in poetry, but this collection is an example of WHY poetry always felt out of the average Joe's reach. There's so much imagery in Atwood's poems it's hard to follow along, most of the time I can't decipher what's happening or the story being conveyed. It's too "poetic" if you know what I mean. I really enjoyed some of Atwood's construction of images, but it was more than I could handle majority of the time.
July 17, 2021
"This Is a Photograph of Me
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)"
When I read something like this, from a master of words, it dawns on me that I don't read poetry very often -- or enough. Beautiful, eerie, unexpected -- all the words!
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)"
When I read something like this, from a master of words, it dawns on me that I don't read poetry very often -- or enough. Beautiful, eerie, unexpected -- all the words!
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