1971 collection of poems by Margaret Atwood. Anansi Press, Concord, Ontario. ISBN 0-88784-579-7
This is a brutal little book. I can only read one or two of the poems it contains at a time before it hurts too much. As Phyllis Webb writes on the back cover, "Margaret Atwood performs an autopsy on a love affair that's dead but won't lie down." I bought my copy of Power Politics at the beginning of my freshman year of college, which inserted enough distance into my existing relationships to render un-ignorable just how unhealthy they were, so it became increasingly relevant as the year passed. Today I can look at its contents and think beyond the raw passion and pain of a doomed heterosexual relationship and see a greater picture of male-female conflicts, romantic and otherwise. But I still read carefully, and only bits at a time.
Most of the poems in Power Politics are untitled, including my favorite, which begins,
We are hard on each other
and call it honesty
and so I can't node them like I might otherwise (um, assuming I could do so in a CST-approvable manner, of course). However, I am willing to share Power Politics in the Great Grand E2 Book Lotto style, so if you're interested, drop me a /msg and we'll see what we can do.
Last updated 3 April 2012