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Articles

Volume 06, Number 1 (1981)

Margaret Atwood's Hands

  • George Bowering
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1981-01-01

Abstract

In her latest work in verse -- Two-Headed Poems and True Stories -- Margaret Atwood, concerning her various poetic personae, has been accepting some constraint while still pressing with all her faculties at the edges of it. We know that it is impossible to find the real Atwood by casting our eyes over the pages of her poetry, yet we still feel with conviction that the space between woman and speaker of the poems is next to snug, is compressed and saturated with energy. However, when people at their most vulgar ask what Atwood is "really like," they are unwittingly asking for a comparison, and they are requesting that one put aside her being as a poet. She is, of course, real, and perhaps different from the persona that speaks the art, but her skill in finding and fashioning the persona is her reality.