Against Still Life
In the poem Against Still Life, poet Margaret Atwood fascinates us by weaving her words into descriptive feelings we can all relate too, especially women. Atwood is a well known poet and novelist who has a certain way of grabbing the attention of the reader and throwing the reader’s thoughts around without her even realizing it. In Against Still Life for example, Atwood opens her poem with an orange, nothing more than an orange. By the end of the poem she has got the reader pondering what men think about. It is assumed that Atwood is the speaker of the poem and the setting is simply a situation most of us can find ourselves in often. The speaker of the poem is Margaret Atwood herself. She describes thoughts that would only belong to her. Atwood uses the word “I” to describe herself in the poem and “you” to describe a second party other than the reader, who we later find to be a man. The poem, seems as though it is directed as a thought to the man, not a conversation or a poem for him to read, but Atwood’s desire to know this man’s thoughts. Atwood is clever, and describes feelings and the frustrations that any woman has felt about a man. This makes us
Atwood paints the scene beautifully. A man and a women, sitting across from one another at a table and in the center of the table, an orange, “Orange, in the middle of the table… [a]nd you, sitting across the table, at a distance with your smile contained, and like the orange in the sun; silent…” {Quote}. This could be taking place somewhere as simple as Atwood’s personal kitchen or maybe in a park at a picnic bench. The woman is sitting there with orange and man in perfect line of view. She first stares at the orange. Her eyes move from the orange to the man and she notices how alike they are because she has no idea what’s going on in the inside of either one. The situation then becomes uncomfortable for Atwood as she realizes she is sitting across from someone who is as quiet and awkwardly easily compared to an orange. She wants to know everything about the man including past, present and future. It is not enough that he is just smiling, sitting across from her. Atwood’s attitude in the poem is very demanding and unknowing. She is a woman who wants answers about a man. She is having a hard time understanding this man and wants to know what’s going on inside his head. This happens to describe Atwood perfectly because she once said her husband (who is also a writer) was “[b]etter than a dentist. At least another writer knows why you are being so strange. And you can take long vacations” (Author Profile). really wonder if Atwood truly feels this way, or if she is just describing feelings that a general woman have about a general man. I believe Atwood did this on purpose not only to more easily relate to the reader but because she once said in a lecture, “Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About
Some common words found in the essay are:
Author Profile, Margaret Atwood, , what’s inside, sitting table, what’s inside head, margaret atwood, atwood realizes, inside head, speaker poem, women atwood, woman sitting, believe atwood,
Approximate Word count = 1274
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
