Morning in the Burned House

Morning in the Burned House sees Margaret Atwood's poetry returning to the fiery intensity of her early books, such as The Circle Game (1966), which won the Canadian Governor General's Award, and Procedures for Underground (1970), which established her as an international voice. These beautifully crafted poems - by turns dark, playful, intensely moving, tender, and intimate - come together as Atwood's most accomplished and versatile gathering to date, "setting foot on the middle ground/between body and word." Some poems draw on history and on myth, both classical and popular. Others, more personal, concern themselves with love and the fragility of the natural world in a contemporary landscape haunted by images of the past. Morning in the Burned House, Atwood's first poetry collection in a decade, shines with breathtaking insight, technical virtuosity, and a clarity of vision that has the force to change the way we look at our lives. As Michael Ondaatje has written, "Margaret Atwood bri