Quote 1
Never
mind the fact that all the really stirring poems I’d read at that
time had been about slaughter, mayhem, sex and death—poetry was
thought of as existing in the pastel female realm, along with embroidery
and flower arranging.
This quotation comes from a speech Atwood
delivered at Hay-on-Wye, Wales, in June 1995.
Atwood’s poems deal with bloody themes—rape, murder, decay—that
are impossible to lump into the “pastel female realm.” From the
beginning of her career as a poet, Atwood seems to have been determined
to eschew “embroidery and flower arranging” and all of the female
complacency those activities implied. She set out to prove that
even a diminutive Canadian girl could write about “slaughter, mayhem,
sex and death,” and in this she has fully succeeded. As she points
out, her favorite topics are violent and previously thought of as
“masculine,” and she incorporates them into her poetry without making
concessions to what may be expected of her as a woman writer.
