Customer Reviews

Morning in the Burned House

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4 star:		(1)
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This book is very aptly titled. The poems feel like waking up in a pile of cinders that used to be a house. Not sad really. Just sort of empty. As if everything has been reduced to stark facts with a few flowers sprouting here and there out of the ashes. There is something profoundly touching about these poems. They do an amazing job of conveying the spent feeling after the huge emotional turmoil of losing a parent. One line from the book that runs through my head sometimes: "After a pause, she says--he hears her say--'I love you like salt.'"

Margaret Atwood is an unnerving poet. The poems from her latest collection, Morning in the Burned House, slip into the dark spaces of the heart and probe the truths hidden there with a surgeon's calm attention and impersonal compassion. Nothing frightens off her surgical pen. And, to stretch the metaphor, there are the same displays of black, laconic humour with which every surgical team challenges death to another round. While many of the poems maintain a cool detachment, more or less amused, Atwood is equally adept at embracing the intensely personal with both love or anger. The most poignant poems in this collection deal with the death of the poet's father - and indeed, as the title of this collection suggests, a sense of loss is at the heart of many of these poems. Atwood's poetic vision of the world is often sharp and bleak. She speaks of this in "Owl Burning" when she writes, "You have soft feet./You don't know what it's like/so close to bedrock'. This is contemporary poetry at its rock hardest - and it's most memorable.

I've no other way to describe her poetry than powerful. I find her novels to be hit or miss, but this book of poetry is a big hit. The imagery is vivid and visceral. And beautiful. This is one of my favorites and my copy is well worn.

Margaret Atwood has once again delivered a simply wonderful collection of her works. Being an avid reader of her work I delight in each new book she puts out. Her writing is so real one can almost feel, touch, taste, or be wherever she is writing about. There is a maturity and higher level of writing expertise that she possesses. I would almost dare to say she is a class of her own. An excellent book. I look forward to more in the future!

Dorothy Krusky
Author The Chrismas Cat - A Child's Christmas Story 2005
Life's Ride - A Journal of Poems 2007

An avid poetry reader and writer, I was introduced to the sparklingly new and innovative metaphors found in Atwood's book, MORNING IN A BURNED HOUSE, by a teacher. The poems certainly illuminate the ancient hidden core of individuals that yearns to beleive in something greater and more powerful...the human spirit. A great addition to a poetry library. Profoundly clear and imaginative.

Though I really cannot remember the last time I read a book of poetry, when I spotted this library discard by the well-respected Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, I could not resist. I was hooked with the first poem, as I felt that these words could have echoed from my own thoughts -- a feeling that continued with many more poems in this book. I also loved that she did not feel the need to make her poems rhyme or follow any specific rhythm. I believe the technical term is free verse. At any rate, it was much more freeing to read than the typical poetry I remember from my school days. I find myself also growing in respect for the author, as I think it is rather courageous to publish a book of poetry, even for an established author like Margaret Atwood. Poetry somehow feels more raw and closer to the heart of the author than a lengthy work of fiction. Though I have jotted down bits of poetry in private moments, I would not dare share most of it with anyone. Some of my favorites are "A Sad Child", "Red Fox", and "Helen of Try Does Counter Dancing", but I found something to like in every poem. I highly recommend this very enjoyable read, even if poetry is not your cup of tea.

The title poem leads us to Atwood's dense, ironic world: "In the burned
house I am eating breakfast. You understand:there is no house, there is no breakfast, yet here I am." The poet occupies that space where reality, the present, is informed by imagination's creative re-rendering
of an encroaching past.
"Waiting" announces the appearance of " the dark thing...waited for so long." Atwood recounts various musings about this dark thing before it really becomes present and finds that it " is strangely like home."
She then details that past in a sepia-toned reverie in which she realizes " for the first time in your life that you would be old." The
dark thing-- being in an "old murky" body, "a stranger's body you could not even imagine" is here now and yet "nothing new". The fear of being old
she felt as a child and had forgotten " has now come true".
There is tough humor present everywhere. In the voice of Sekhmet,
The Lion-Headed Goddess of War, Atwood so easily diminishes the monuments
of men that Ozymandias would be unable to stifle a bitter laugh:
"I see the temple where I was born or built, where I held power.
I see the desert beyond, where the hot, conical tombs,that look
from a distance, frankly, like dunces' hats
hide my jokes....
The turn of expectation in the enjambment is one merit of her work.
The language of these poems may seem sparse, but that language
elicits from its self-references, its sharp ironies, its pronouncements,
an emotional richness where the reader, now attuned to its subtle internal melodies, recognizes that something important and true is being said.

While it's always cheering to find literary poetry on the bestseller list, this seems to have made the (Canadian)bestseller lists merely because of the author's name. It's not *bad* poetry, just not great, and Atwood at this late stage is forcing the humour: she's funny in her novels without being coy or whimsical, which she does to excess in this collection. Maybe it was an off-year for Atwood as poet--she's currently stronger as a novelist, in a reversal of her early career. This book is not representative of Atwood's best poetry; unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to find Atwood's best poetry in the United States