The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 10/30/07

[BlueIris]

"Spelling" 

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

             •

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains,
so they could mainline words.

             •

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.
		
             •

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied 
together by the enemy 
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress:  the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

		           •

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

		           •

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

—Margaret Atwood

[BlueIris]

1. Kick.

[ThomCat]

2. Oh Wow!

That imagery is intense. And the part about the woman in labor is going to be scared into my memory now. I hate that I can imagine men doing that. :(

[BlueIris]

4. The line that's scarred into my memory is, "A child is not a poem,/a poem is not a child."

[RetroLounge]

3. That's beautiful!

I love Atwood. She amazes me every time...

:hi:

RL

[BlueIris]

5. Atwood, IMO, has produced the most consistently excellent writing of the modern age.

Have you ever read something by Atwood that wasn't brilliant? I haven't.

[BlueIris]

6. Kick.