Margaret Atwood’s The Door
McClelland & Stewart, 2007

Serious about helping me tone my oh-so flabby poetry muscle, Mr. BIP bought me a copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Door. Yup, I’m lucky that way.

For those who are wondering how the exercise regiment is going, I’m going to the poetry gym twice a week, doing a set of 5 or 6 on the verse press at lunchtime, and then settling into a novel.

(I prefer the idea of shorter bursts on a daily basis, but I’ll settle for this whilst working full-time.)

Are you still debating whether there is room for poetry in your reading life?

The Door is the collection for you if…

…you’re curious about the goings-on with “Owl and Pussycat Some Years Later”…
…you’re unsure about the significance of a simple “White Cotton T-shirt”…
…you want to know about the inner workings of a “Poetry Reading”…
…you’re concerned about the “Disturbed Earth”…
…you’d really just like some simple chat about “The Weather”.

Think poetry isn’t for you? But you’ve loved Margaret Atwood’s essays/stories/novels? Try The Door. I think after just one workout, you’ll discover you have reading muscles in places you didn’t know they could exist.

Next month I’m going small press with my poetry exercises.

Have you been stretching your reading life in any new directions lately?

* The title of this post appears in the poem “Another Visit to the Oracle”.