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Where do the words gowhen we have said them?

Picture of Margaret Atwood
Margaret AtwoodProcedures For Underground

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I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their ...

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Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish and glee and throw them ...

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There is the staircase,there is the sun.There is the kitchen,the plate with toast and strawberry jam,your subterfuge,your ordinary mirage.You stand re...

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The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersa...

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UPYou wake up filled with dread.There seems no reason for it.Morning light sifts through the window,there is birdsong,you can't get out of bed.It's so...

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Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go.You could not believe I was more than your echo.

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They were wrong about the sun.It does not go down into the underworld at night.The sun leaves merelyand the underworld emerges.It can happen at any mo...

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with shrunken fingerswe ate our oranges and bread,shivering in the parked car;though we know we had neverbeen there before,we knew we had been there b...

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Then there's the twoof us. This wordis far too short for us, it has onlyfour letters, too sparseto fill those deep barevacuums between the starsthat p...