Power Politics
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: March 1, 2017 3:40 PM | Last Updated: March 1, 2017
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood's Power Politics first appeared in 1971, startling its audience with its vital dance of woman and man. It still startles, and is just as iconoclastic as ever.
These poems occupy all at once the intimate, the political and the mythic. Here Atwood makes us realize that we may think our own personal dichotomies are unique, but really they are multiple, universal. Clear, direct, wry, unrelenting — Atwood's poetic powers are honed to perfection in this important early work. (From House of Anansi)
From the book
i)
We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.
The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.
ii)
Of course your lies
are more amusing:
you make them new each time.
Your truths, painful and boring
repeat themselves over & over
perhaps because you own
so few of them
iii)
A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you
is that a fact or a weapon?
iv)
Does the body lie
moving like this, are these
touches, hairs, wet
soft marble my tongue runs over
lies you are telling me?
Your body is not a word,
it does not lie or
speak truth either.
It is only
here or not here.
From Power Politics by Margaret Atwood ©1971. Published by House of Anansi.