Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health- Chapter Twenty, Second Section by Dave Jaffe

•         The Poet As Hard Working Canadian Icon:Second Section.

       Margaret Atwood's poetry, like her fiction, has often been marked by sadism.
       "In the country of the animals" she writes in her poem 'The Animals in This Country'
      " Their eyes flash in a car headlights and are gone
        Their deaths are not elegant
       They have the face of no one."

    In her poem 'For Archeologists' Atwood again describes violence  to animals.
    "Deep under, far back
    The early horses run, on rock.
    the buffalo, the deer
    run with spears in their back."
 
    "My women suffer," Atwood told Judy Klemesred in 'The New York Times, "because most of the women I talk to have suffered."
     Yet Atwood can throw a few curve balls too at those who expect simplistic feminist or nationalistic themes in her works. The main abuser and vicious character in her very fine novel 'Cat's Eye' is a woman. The novel that appeared in the 1970's, called 'Surfacing' is full of anti-American vitriol. Yet it's Canadians, not Americans, who do bad things in the novel. Atwood has faced some tough criticism from people like the late Montreal-based poet Irving Layton and the cultural critic and journalist Robert Fulford. It doesn't seem to have bothered her.
     In 2007 Atwood put out another collection of poems called 'The Door'. It was her first collection of poetry in ten years. 'The Door' contains 50 poems and is divided into ten sections. Some of the free verse works. Some doesn't.
      Atwood's poetry here says critic Jay Parini, "is full of wintry scenes, harsh autumnul rains, splintered lives and awkward relationships."
     "The brown meandering river
     he was always in some wars after that," writes Atwood in her poem 'Butterfly in the Doors'
     trying in vain to get back to that."

    From her late teens onward, Atwood may have set out to prove two things.  First, that women could and did write great literature. Secondly that before she came along, Canada produced interesting literature. If these were some of her aims, she succeeded on both counts.
     "Margaret Atwood is an iconic figure in this city," a Toronto resident said a few years ago. She is probably a Canadian iconic figure too, who's wrttten some very fine works.