The evolution of Margaret Atwood's poetry since she began writing it
twenty-five years ago illuminates one of our major literary talents.
"Selected Poems II" contains seventy-three poems, some of them
extensive, drawn from her work since 1975, and it includes a number of
poems never previously published in the United States. As in her fiction
( "Surfacing, Lady Oracle, Life Before Man, The Handmaid's Tale,
Bluebeard's Egg" ) Atwood ruminates on oppression and injustice and on
the genders and their discontents, but beyond these surface dissonances
we hear the music of compassion and fellowship and love.