Poet's Choice

By ROBERT PINSKY
Sunday, November 11, 2007

The distinguished fiction writer Margaret Atwood is also a terrific poet. She even writes memorable poems about being a poet, for example, "The poet has come back . . . ," a sharp reminder that poetry is not merely good thoughts well expressed:

The poet has come back to being a poet

after decades of being virtuous instead.

Can't you he both?

No. Not in public.

You could, once,

back when God was still thundering vengeance

and liked the scent of blood,

and hadn't got around to slippery forgiveness.

Then you could scatter incense and praise,

and wear your snake necklace,

and hymn the crushed skulls of your enemies

to a pious chorus.

No deferential smiling, no baking of cookies,

no I'm a nice person really.

Welcome back, my dear.

Time to resume our vigil,

time to unlock the cellar door,

time to remind ourselves

that the god of poets has two hands:

the dextrous, the sinister.

Similarly bracing and mordant is "Heart":

Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.

It was either that or the soul.

The hard part is getting the damn thing out.

A kind of twisting motion, like shucking an oyster,

your spine a wrist,

and then, hup! it's in your mouth.

You turn yourself partially inside out

like a sea anemone coughing a pebble.

There's a broken plop, the racket

of fish guts into a pail,

and there it is, a huge glistening deep-red clot

of the still-alive past, whole on the plate.

It gets passed around. It's slithery. It gets dropped,

but also tasted. Too coarse, says one. Too salty.

Too sour, says another, making a face.

Each one is an instant gourmet,

and you stand listening to all this

in the corner, like a newly hired waiter,

your diffident, skilful hand on the wound hidden

deep in your shirt and chest,

shyly, heartless.

Emphasizing how much is at stake in true poetry, Atwood disdains genial reassurance. Her candid, funny, unsparing account of the art demonstrates its humanity.

(Margaret Atwood's poems "The poet has come back . . . " and "Heart" are from her book "The Door." Houghton Mifflin.

Copyright ¿ 2007 by O.W. Toad Ltd.)