The Door by Margaret Atwood

I have most of Atwood’s fiction – it has a certain charm: sometimes humorous, sometimes cautionary, almost always nostalgic. I have enjoyed all her work, particularly Cat’s Eye, my clear-cut favorite. This is my first volume of her poetry, and I have to say they all share a consistent voice, sometimes discordant and jarring, sometimes with mildly disturbing images, sometimes (rarely) lyrical. Several of the poems I liked a lot, and most others were okay.

This collection needs going over several more times before I can rate it. Atwood’s voice comes out clear, though, and something makes me want to crawl inside these poems and see what is really there. A few are obscure to me. About 40 of the fifty poems are collected on a CD read by Atwood.

--Chiron, 4/6/08