Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The first book of poems in 12 years from the now world-famous Canadian author (The Handmaid?s Tale) combines an older writer?s reflections on aging with the dire warnings-political, environmental and moral-familiar from Atwood?s recent fiction. Short lines and deliberate, balanced phrases consider how "my mother dwindles and dwindles/ and lives and lives," how senior citizens hike and trek across tundra, and how privileged citizens of rich nations might understand refugees from far-off wars. "Owl and Pussycat, Some Years Later"-the longest poem in the book, the wittiest and likely the best-retells the familiar rhyme as a parable of late-career poets, rueful and "no longer semi-immortal," yet still conversing, still writing, as they go on rowing "out past the last protecting/ sandbar." Other verse shows Atwood-who began as a poet, despite her fame as a novelist-looking at the climate for new poetry amid the sometimes funny parochialism of its audiences (in Canada or anywhere). Yet the predominant notes are fiercely grim: ice melts and cracks, mammals head towards extinction, "the hurt child will bite you... And its blood will seep into the water/ and you will drink it every day." One page compares all poets everywhere to violinists on the Titanic. Another declares, truthfully, "That?s what I do:/ I tell dark stories/ before and after they come true." (Nov.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Review by Library Journal Review
If there's an overriding theme to Atwood's latest volume of poems, her first since Morning in the Burned House (1995), it's the messiness of love. As the widely lauded author presents it in these 50 poems, love is shape-shifting; its moments of tenderness, toughness, insights, and insults appear and disappear like the Cheshire cat. Atwood looks at cats, crickets, butterflies, woods, gardens, autumn, a dying mother, the difficulties of aging-specifically of being an aging female poet-and the nature of poetry from the inside out. In "Owl and Pussycat, Some Years Later," a blend of dramatic monolog and parody, for example, she makes those nursery-rhyme figures not just people, but poets. As the titular characters muse regretfully on their shared past, they wonder whether their talent is any better "than the ability to win the sausage-eating contest, or juggle six plates at once." Their tone suggests the dichotomy of whimsy and dark irony that suffuses the book, one complementing the other. A richly layered collection; highly recommended for all libraries.-Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
