Dearly - Margaret Atwood

I recently finished Margaret Atwood’s poetry book “Dearly” and loved it, dearly. Though I have to admit I haven’t read much of her work, I am well aware that Margaret is among our best Canadian authors and I was delighted to receive Dearly as a gift this past Christmas of 2020. As it turns out, her book was released in November 2020 around the same time as I was releasing mine. Margaret writes about anything and everything in this book, covering the lateness of a poem in comparison to what has already unfolded, to the life of a cicada (I love cicadas and their contribution to the sounds of summer), to a girls’ health class in the 1950s. Her poem series Pasticene Suite plays with plastic as a name for the current epoch and explores environmental issues, deviating in the middle with some possible tension and mocking of editorial commentary. There are no boundaries to Margaret’s imagination. She includes poems on werewolves, zombies, and aliens. Other poems also touch on realism with end-of-life experiences, remnants of winter vacations, and the luxury of eating coconut during a war (incidentally, I am finding coconut milk difficult absent on grocery store shelves during the current Covid-19 crisis). Some of her work is abstract and loses me in comprehension but still impresses me with her mastery of words. I am glad to add Margaret’s book to my poetry collection.
​