Dearly

 Margaret Atwood shifted the conversation of poetry with her four-line poem, “You Fit into Me,” published in 1971. Since the entrance of her image of a fisheye and hook into a collective literary consciousness, Atwood set the bar of her poetic compositions. With the recent publication of her collection of poetry titled, “Dearly,” the world had not received poetry from Atwood for over a decade. Expectations were high. There have been mixed reviews when receiving this book of poetry. Some reviewers deem that with this recent book of poetry Atwood’s writing has fallen ‘short of [the] mark,’ there are issues taken with the unsettling tone of the topical movement throughout the pieces, an impression of ‘the rapidity of writing,’ that the pieces came to press too soon, that there is a lack of editing or more significantly, that these pieces in “Dearly” signal an ‘inevitable decline in the work’ of one of the world’s most looked to authors.

 During my graduate studies in 2019 at Trent University I wrote an essay titled, “Missing, Murdered or Concealed: Margaret Atwood and Canada’s Missing Literary Venus” which explored Margaret Atwood’s determination in her 1972 thematic guide, “Survival,” of the missing Canadian literary Venus. Upon examination of Chapter 10, “Ice Women Vs Earth Mothers: The Stone Angel and the Absent Venus,” Atwood theorized that a Canadian literary Venus was possibly not absent or missing from Canadian literature but was concealed. My analysis navigated this concealment. I investigated texts by First Nations writers listed in an appendix by Atwood at the end of Chapter 4, “First People: Indians and Eskimos as Symbols.” “Survival” was designed around texts that Atwood encountered growing up but did not present to her an imaginable and tangible literary Venus. “Missing, Murdered or Concealed” argued for a new understanding of how Atwood possibly could not locate a Canadian literary Venus in Canadian literature by omitting a Native literary voice. This essay prompted readers to contemplate the place of women as sacred and divine in the culture of First Nations and literary traditions while carving out the direction of acknowledging the atrocity of missing and murdered Native women in Canadian society. I think, with the shift and scope of some of the poems in “Dearly,” that Margaret Atwood has contributed an authorial voice on the experience of women that she could not discuss in 1972, and that this expression of opinion is necessary for Canadian literature. I think that many reviewers missed this significant authorial inclusion.  

“These are the late poems. / Most poems are late of course: too late,/ like a letter sent by a sailor that arrives after he's drowned.” Atwood pulls the reader in with these lines. Written in her elder years, there is relief for me here: better late than never. Here is a chance to set things straight and to not let time run out. With bias, I connect the dots to the following poetry on the topic of the violence against women. In the sequence, “Songs For Murdered Sisters” Atwood acknowledges lives lost, but, she digs deeper, anchors the reader to something more ancient of the subordination of women. “So many sisters lost,” she muses, “So many lost sisters/ Over the years, thousands of years.” Her reflections on this reality is haunting, “I was too late,/ Too late to save you./ Ghost of my sister?/ Or would you let him live?/ Would you instead forgive?” Within this context, Atwood knows she is writing so late on the issue, that her voice of power and influence was needed. She evokes an almost Gilead image of the capacity of what women can be pushed to in the wake of extreme oppression and cruelty: they will tear the perpetrator apart. Further, they will tear the perpetrator apart with their bare hands. Fur raised and hunching, like an awakening woman birthing in “Surfacing,” if the reviewer cannot connect the lines amongst the author’s canon, the magnitude of her writing is lost in this new collection. You have to have the eye to see it, a hooked eye, an eye that will fit in to the discourse.

I did not feel disquieted by this set of poetry, rather, I felt inspired. I needed to read through the sadness and personal loss, a human layer laid down by an almost untouchable Canadian author. As a woman, her transparency of the aging process is also a necessary scope of voice needed for society, especially to give voice to representation of the female body that is not traditionally spoken of. “Things wear out. Also fingers./ Gnarling sets in./ Your hands crouch in their mittens, forget chopsticks, and buttons./ Feet have their own agendas.” And the tone of a dystopic writer seeps in, “Ears are superfluous:/ What are they for, those alien pink flaps?/ Skull fungus./ The body, once your accomplice, is now your trap.” An aging body that seeks calm, “a flat line you steer for.” We need to hear the language women have about their bodies and the conversations they have with them. This language takes back power while allowing women to be vulnerable. There is strength in that sensitivity. The world needs sensitivity now. The world needs authenticity. The world needs authentic art.

Atwood’s literary canon is weighed heavily. Some will omit “Dearly” from the list of best Atwoodian works. I argue to leave it in. Do not overlook it. Ironic would be becoming footnoted in your own repertoire, especially ‘appendicized’ as a voice that finally extended to missing and murdered women. “No more hiss and slosh, / no reefs, no deeps,/ no throat rattle of gravel.

It sounds like this:.”

And so much unsaid after a colon: colonization. To me, I read it this way. What is left out. What has been left out is important to take into consideration during the inevitable weighing. “Some berries occur in sun, but they are smaller./It's as I always told you:/the best ones grow in shadow.” Look for what grows in the shade.