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.
Spelling
Margaret Atwood
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Poem topics: away, birth, daughter, metaphor, power, red, sky, sun, together, truth, war, woman, women, blue, return, hard, enemy, story, plastic, language, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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Write your comment about Spelling poem by Margaret Atwood
Myron: Egads! No, I don't use that expression, but it somehow seemed fitting here. This "poem" reminds me of the Beatnik verbal trash, vomited by reefer addled people in the 60s poetry slams. I wonder how many finger snaps this would get from the Seconal soaked crowd.
Paul of Peachtree City: Words may be autological, but this is the first autological poem I've encountered. This is written two days after the Canadian Postal Service honoured Ms. Atwood with a stamp bearing words from this poem. Never underestimate the power of words, nor the ability of someone with Ms. Atwood's talent to create powerful poems.
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