Morning In The Burned House: Poems

By Margaret Atwood

The renowned poet and author of The Handmaid’s Tale “brings a swift, powerful energy” to this “intimate and immediate” poetry collection (Publishers Weekly).

These beautifully crafted poems, by turns dark, playful, intensely moving, tender, and intimate, are some of Margaret Atwood’s most accomplished and versatile works. Some draw on history and some on myth, both classical and popular. Others, more personal, concern themselves with love, with the fragility of the natural world, and with death. Generous, searing, compassionate, and disturbing, this poetry rises out of human experience to seek a level between luminous memory and the realities of the everyday, between the capacity to inflict and the strength to forgive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9780547525754

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in more than forty-five countries, is the author of over fifty books, including fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning television series, her works include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; The MaddAddam Trilogy; The Heart Goes Last; Hag-Seed; The Testaments, which won the Booker Prize and was long-listed for the Giller Prize; and the poetry collection Dearly. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in Great Britain for her services to literature. She lives in Toronto.

Book preview

I

You Come Back

You come back into the room

where you’ve been living

all along. You say:

What’s been going on

while I was away? Who

got those sheets dirty, and why

are there no more grapefruit?

Setting foot on the middle ground

between body and word, which contains,

or is supposed to, other

people. You know it was you

who slept, who ate here, though you don’t

believe it. I must have taken

time off, you think, for the buttered

toast and the love and maybe both

at once, which would account for the

grease on the bedspread, but no,

now you’re certain, someone else

has been here wearing

your clothes and saying

words for you, because there was no time off.

A Sad Child

You’re sad because you’re sad.

It’s psychic. It’s the age. It’s chemical.

Go see a shrink or take a pill,

or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll

you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad

but some get over it.

Count your blessings. Better than that,

buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.

Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?

Your sadness, your shadow,

whatever it was that was done to you

the day of the lawn party

when you came inside flushed with the sun,

your mouth sulky with sugar,

in your new dress with the ribbon

and the ice-cream smear,

and said to yourself in the bathroom,

I am not the favourite child.

My darling, when it comes

right down to it

and the light fails and the fog rolls in

and you’re trapped in your overturned body

under a blanket or burning car,

and the red flame is seeping out of you

and igniting the tarmac beside your head

or else the floor, or else the pillow,

none of us is;

or else we all are.

In the Secular Night

In the secular night you wander around

alone in your house. It’s two-thirty.

Everyone has deserted you,

or this is your story;

you remember it from being sixteen,

when the others were out somewhere, having a good

     time,

or so you suspected,

and you had to baby-sit.

You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream

and filled up the glass with grapejuice

and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller

with his big-band sound,

and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,

and cried for a while because you were not dancing,

and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with

     purple.

Now, forty years later, things have changed,

and it’s baby lima beans.

It’s necessary to reserve a secret vice.

This is what comes from forgetting to eat

at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,

drain, add cream and pepper,

and amble up and down the stairs,

scooping them up with your fingers right out of the

     bowl,

talking to yourself out loud.

You’d be surprised if you got an answer,

but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,

you say. You say, The sensed absence

of God and the sensed presence

amount to much the same thing,

only in reverse.

You say, I have too much white clothing.

You start to hum.

Several hundred years ago

this could have been mysticism

or heresy. It isn’t now.

Outside there are sirens.

Someone’s been run over.

The century grinds on.

Waiting

Here it is then, the dark thing,

the dark thing you have waited for so long.

You have made such melodramas.

You thought it would carry its own mist,

obscuring you in a damp enfolding, like the mildew

shroud on bread. Or you thought it would hide

in your closet, among the clothes you outgrew years ago,

nesting in dustballs and fallen hair, shedding

one of your fabricated skins

after another and growing bigger,

honing its teeth on your discarded

cloth lives, and then it would pounce

from the inside out, and your heart

would be filled with roaring

or else that it would come swiftly and without sound,

but with one pitiless glaring eye, like

Reviews for Morning In The Burned House

[zoes_human · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A quiet and thoughtful set of poems, Morning in the Burned House is primarily a meditation upon grief, the passage of time, and the temporary nature of all things. Atwood is as gifted at poetry as she is at prose. My rating is more a reflection of my personal interest in the primary topics of this collection than of her skill.

[jacobsbeloved · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Though I really cannot remember the last time I read a book of poetry, when I spotted this library discard by the well-respected Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, I could not resist. I was hooked with the first poem, as I felt that these words could have echoed from my own thoughts -- a feeling that continued with many more poems in this book. I also loved that she did not feel the need to make her poems rhyme or follow any specific rhythm. I believe the technical term is free verse. At any rate, it was much more freeing to read than the typical poetry I remember from my school days. I find myself also growing in respect for the author, as I think it is rather courageous to publish a book of poetry, even for an established author like Margaret Atwood. Poetry somehow feels more raw and closer to the heart of the author than a lengthy work of fiction. Though I have jotted down bits of poetry in private moments, I would not dare share most of it with anyone. Some of my favorites are "A Sad Child", "Red Fox", and "Helen of Try Does Counter Dancing", but I found something to like in every poem. I highly recommend this very enjoyable read, even if poetry is not your cup of tea.

[andreablythe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My second read of Atwood's lovely collection of poetry ingrained them even more into my imagination. Her poetry creates a mythology of the everyday and brings a feel of reality to mythological tales, often speaking from the point of view of a previously silent woman. This is a beautiful collection, which I will be adding to my personal book shelf as soon as I can.

[amyfaerie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A lovely collection of honest poems--some of Atwood's best, in my opinion.

[rampaginglibrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Margaret is a vocable Goddess so of course she is a splendid poet. Poetry was my first love, it seduced me and i have cruely abandoned it, sometimes Poets like Tate, Plath, Sexton, cummings, Ackerman, and Atwood come along to remind me what i'm missing. Read this collection let the words slide onto your tongue, sit there and slip slowly off. Love poetry.