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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
In her first poetry collection since 1987's Selected Poems II, Atwood brings a swift, powerful energy to meditative poems that often begin in domestic settings and then broaden into numinous dialogues. In "In the Secular Night," the speaker, who has wandered through her house talking to herself of the "sensed absences of God," realizes "Several hundred years ago/this could have been mysticism/ or heresy. It isn't now." In five roughly thematic sections, Atwood often displays incisive humor ("Ava Gardner Reincarnated as a Magnolia"). The most vivid poems forge an apprehensible human aspect from scholarly fields of science, history and religion: in "Half-hanged Mary" a woman who was being hanged for witchery, survives and tolls each hour until she is cut down. The final grouping seems compiled from the charred remains of a deeply examined life, where only "the power of what is not there" may transcend. Atwood's lean, free-verse style renders these apocryphal poems intimate and immediate.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
This is Atwood's first poetry collection in a decade, and its publication (her 12th overall) is a reminder that she is as prolific a poet as she is a novelist. As in her fiction, these poems are written with an arched eyebrow toward the foibles of the sexes, but she is at her most barbed when mocking the constraints society imposes on women. In an acerbic series of poems on famous femmes fatales, she empowers her women by lampooning "men and their mournful romanticisms/that can't get the dishes done." Atwood's satiric side is balanced by a darker, almost melancholy lyricism, shadowed by loss and a growing awareness of mortality. One section of the book is devoted to a group of moving poems on the death of her father and how the dead?"especially those we have loved the most"?return "from where we have shoved them/from under the ground, from under the water/they clutch at us,/we won't let go." Recommended for contemporary poetry collections and libraries with a strong Atwood following.?Christine Stenstrom, Brooklyn P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Profound. Simple. Human.,
By Myrtle Poplar (NJ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Morning in the Burned House (Paperback)
This book is very aptly titled. The poems feel like waking up in a pile of cinders that used to be a house. Not sad really. Just sort of empty. As if everything has been reduced to stark facts with a few flowers sprouting here and there out of the ashes. There is something profoundly touching about these poems. They do an amazing job of conveying the spent feeling after the huge emotional turmoil of losing a parent. One line from the book that runs through my head sometimes: "After a pause, she says--he hears her say--'I love you like salt.'"
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
'Half-Hanged Mary' a wonderful illustration of Atwoods lyrical force,
By
This review is from: Morning in the Burned House (Hardcover)
Atwood's work 'Half-Hanged Mary' in this book of a poetry, A Morning in the Burned House, is such a wonderful examination of gender, informal power, and transcendence. It is one of my favourite poems. Her beautiful but disturbing examination of the hanging, and eventual survival, of Mary Webster during a Puritan witch hunt for her failure to fit within acceptable gender norms is so powerfully rendered. When placed within the larger anthropological study of gendered witchcraft accusations as an 'alternative-modernity' it takes on a whole new level of significance.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Dazzling Journey into Metaphor and Myth,
By Sujay Pandit (Flemington, New Jersey) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Morning in the Burned House (Paperback)
An avid poetry reader and writer, I was introduced to the sparklingly new and innovative metaphors found in Atwood's book, MORNING IN A BURNED HOUSE, by a teacher. The poems certainly illuminate the ancient hidden core of individuals that yearns to beleive in something greater and more powerful...the human spirit. A great addition to a poetry library. Profoundly clear and imaginative.
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