Have been dipping into this for months. Putting it on the bookshelf now but shall continue to dip. There are a lot of poems here. A few favourites: Blackie in Antarctica, Bear Lament, The Line: Five Variations, One Day you will Reach, Reindeer Moss on Granite. ( )

My first real foray into reading poetry. While I'm sure there was a lot that was beyond my comprehension, I still enjoyed it, nonetheless. Also being the first work by Atwood that I've ever read, I'm not sure how it compares to her fiction. ( )

apart from a handful of poems, i found this collection very disappointing. ( )

On the surface these are fairly simple straightforward, easily readable poems. About a third of them resonated for me with deeper meaning, surprising me and making me think, particularly those dealing with the poet and those dealing with age and death. ( )

Margaret Atwood’s The Door was published in 2007, and as such is a reflection on life from a position of maturity. Atwood was born in 1939, and the poems reflect her growing realization that she is aging. Some of the poems are sad. Some seem almost bitter. The volume I got from the library also had an audio disc of Atwood reading half of the poems – a touch that gave these poems a personality beyond the mere(!) words.

Please keep in mind that I’m not a poetry critic; I just like these poems. I’m still learning how to read poetry and I have no idea how to talk about it. But I enjoyed the experience of reading this volume of poetry.

More thoughts on my blog