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HANDOUT FOR CTIF Madrid-Sur COURSE: FEMALE LITERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES & CANADA

SESSION 5, 6, 7: CANADIAN WOMEN WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY, Dr Pilar Somacarrera, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

(pilar.somacarrera@uam.es)

SESSION 1: November 19, 2012: POLITICS IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S POETRY

(1) From The Animals in That Country (1968):

“ At the Tourist Centre in Boston”

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(2)

you fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

(Power Politics, 1971)

(3) From Power Politics:

Imperialist, keep off

the trees I said.

No use: you walk backwards,

admiring your own footprints (Power Politics)

(4) From Power Politics:

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From From The Animals in That Country (1968):

“Backdrop Addresses Cowboy”

Starspangled cowboy

sauntering our the almost-

silly West, on your face

a porcelain grin,

tugging a papier-mâché cactus

on wheels behind you with a string,

you are innocent as a bathtub

full of bullets.

Your righteous eyes, your laconic

trigger-fingers

people the street with villains:

as you move, the air in front of you

blossoms with targets

and you leave behind you a heroic

trail of desolation:

beer bottles

slaughtered by the side

of the road, bird-

skulls bleaching in the sunset.

I ought to be watching

from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront

when the shooting starts, hands clasped

in admiration,

but I am elsewhere.

Then what about me

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what about the I

confronting you on that border

you are always trying to cros

I am the horizon/you ride towards,

the thing you can never lasso

I am also what surrounds you:

my brain

scattered with your

tincans, bones, empty shells,

the litter of your invasions.

I am the space you desecrate

as you pass through.

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Footnote to the Amnesty Report on Torture

The torture chamber is not like anythingyou would have expected.No opera set or sexy chains andleather-goods from the glossyporno magazines, no thirties horrordungeon with gauzy cobwebs; nor is itthe bare cold-lightedchrome space of the futurewe think we fear.More like one of the seedierBritish Railways stations, with scratched greenwalls and spilled tea,crumpled papers, and a stooped manwho is always cleaning the floor.

It stinks, though; like a hospital,of antiseptics and sickness,and, on some days, bloodwhich smells the same anywhere,here or at the butcher's.

The man who works hereis losing his sense of smell.He's glad to have this job, becausethere are few others.He isn't a torturer, he onlycleans the floor:every morning the same vomit,the same shed teeth, the samepiss and liquid shit, the same panic.

Some have courage, othersdon't; those who do what he thinks ofas the real work, and who arebored, since minor bureaucratsare always bored, tell themit doesn't matter, whowill ever know they were brave, they mightas well talk nowand get it over.

Some have nothing to say, which alsodoesn't matter. Theirwarped bodies too, with the tornfingers and ragged tongues, are thrown

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over the spiked iron fence ontothe Consul's lawn, along withthe bodies of the childrenburned to make their mothers talk.

The man who cleans the floorsis glad it isn't him.It will be if he ever sayswhat he knows. He works long hours,submits to the searches, eatsa meal he brings from home, which tastesof old blood and the sawdusthe cleans the floor with. His wifeis pleased he brings her moneyfor the food, has been toldnot to ask questions.

As he sweeps, he triesnot to listen; he triesto make himself into a wall,a thick wall, a wallsoft and without echoes. He thinksof nothing but the walk backto his hot shed of a house,of the dooropening and his childrenwith their unmarked skin and flawless eyesrunning to meet him.

He is afraid ofwhat he might doif he were told to,he is afraid of the door,

he is afraid, notof the door but of the dooropening; sometimes, no matterhow hard he tries,his children are not there.

(From Two-Headed Poems 1978)

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A WOMEN’S ISSUE

The woman in the spiked devicethat locks around the waist and betweenthe legs, with holes in it like a tea straineris Exhibit A.The woman in black with a net windowto see through and a four-inchwooden peg jammed upbetween her legs so she can’t be rapedis Exhibit B.Exhibit C is the young girldragged into the bush by the midwivesand made to sing while they scrape the fleshfrom between her legs, then tie her thighstill she scabs over and is called healed.Now she can be married.For each childbirth they’ll cut heropen, then sew her up.Men like tight women.The ones that die are carefully buried.The next exhibit lies flat on her backwhile eighty men a nightmove through her, ten an hour.She looks at the ceiling, listensto the door open and close.A bell keeps ringing.Nobody knows how she got here.You’ll notice that what they have in commonis between the legs. Is thiswhy wars are fought?Enemy territory, no man’sland, to be entered furtively,fenced, owned but never surely,scene of these desperate foraysat midnight, capturesand sticky murders, doctors’ rubber glovesgreasy with blood, flesh made inert, the surgeof your own uneasy power.This is no museum.Who invented the word love?

(From True Stories, 1981)

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“Notes towards a Poem that Can Never Be Written”

(For Carolyn Forché)i

This is the place

you would rather not know about,

this is the place that will inhabit you,

this is the place you cannot imagine,

this is the place that will finally defeat you

where the word why shrivels and empties

itself. This is famine.

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There is no poem you can write

about it, the sandpits

where so many were buried

& unearthed, the unendurable

pain still traced on their skins.

This did not happen last yearf

for forty years ago but last week.

This has been happening,

this happens.

We make wreaths of adjectives for them,

we count them like beads,

we turn them into statistics & litanies

and into poems like this one.

Nothing works.

They remain what they are.

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The woman lies on the wet cement floor

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under the unending light,

needle marks on her arms put there

to kill the brain

and wonders why she is dying.

She is dying because she said.

She is dying for the sake of the word.

It is her body, silent

and fingerless, writing this poem.

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It resembles an operation3but it is not one

nor despite the spread legs, grunts

& blood, is it a birth.

Partly, it's a job,

partly it's a display of skill

like a concerto.

It can be done badly

or well, they tell themselves.

Partly, it's an art.

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The facts of this world seen clearly

are seen through tears;

why tell me then

there is something wrong with my eyes?

To see clearly and without flinching,

without turning away,

this is agony, the eyes taped open

two inches from the sun.

What is it you see then?

Is it a bad dream, a hallucination?

Is it a vision?

What is it you hear?

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The razor across the eyeball

is a detail from an old film.

It is also a truth.

Witness is what you must bear.

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In this country you can say what you like

because no one will listen to you anyway,

it's safe enough, in this country you can try to write

the poem that can never be written,

the poem that invents

nothing and excuses nothing,

because you invent and excuse yourself each day.

Elsewhere, this poem is not invention.

Elsewhere, this poem takes courage.

Elsewhere, this poem must be written

because the poets are already dead.

Elsewhere, this poem must be written

as if you are already dead,

1as if nothing more can be done

or said to save you.

Elsewhere you must write this poem

because there is nothing more to do.

(from True Stories)

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From Two-Headed Poems (1981)

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O

From The Door (2007)

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