Thursday, August 24, 2006

Margaret Atwood's Poem In This Week's New Yorker

I haven't gotten this week's copy yet, but apparently there's a new Atwood poem in there. Someone posted it to this womens poetry listserv I belong to... There's a bit of a controversy over her and it, which I'm hoping to get a chance to write about before we leave tomorrow.

SECRECY
by Margaret Atwood

Secrecy flows through you,
a different kind of blood.
It's as if you've eaten it
like a bad candy,
taken it into your mouth,
let it melt sweetly on your tongue,
then allowed it to slide down your throat
like the reverse of uttering,
a word dissolved
into its glottals and sibilants,
a slow intake of breath --

And now it's in you, secrecy.
Ancient and vicious, luscious
as dark velvet.
It blooms in you,
a poppy made of ink.

You can think of nothing else.
Once you have it, you want more.
What power it gives you!
Power of knowing without being known,
power of the stone door,
power of the iron veil,
power of the crushed fingers,
power of the drowned bones
crying out from the bottom of the well.

4 Comments:

Blogger Gardenia said...

Awesome, awesome poem - I've been married to that person for many years. Scary - so many years and not knowing, not knowing....

12:36 AM  
Blogger Wendy Ann Edwina D'Cunha e Pereira said...

Pretty heavy stuff there... But it seems to point only to the dark side of secrecy....

4:41 AM  
Blogger Red said...

Oooh... goosebumps.

I've never read any Margaret Atwood, but maybe I should start now.

Have a great time at the Burning Man!

5:56 AM  
Blogger Wandering Coyote said...

Hmmmm...Maggie's poetry... Well, this one is much more accessible than her usual stuff. I love her novels, but her poetery and short fiction have always gone right over my head. At least the stuff I had to study in university did. But this is a good one, actually, though it seems a little...um...simplistic for her...
Thanks for posting it.

12:58 AM  

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