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Atwood,
Margaret
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC, O.Ont, FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she is also a poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works.. poet novelist essayist
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The Landlady
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Written by:
Margaret
Atwood
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This is the lair of the landlady
She is
a raw voice
loose in the rooms beneath me.
the continuous henyard
squabble going on below
thought in this house like
the bicker of blood through the head.
She is everywhere, intrusive as the smells
that bulge in under my doorsill;
she presides over my
meagre eating, generates
the light for eyestrain.
From her I rent my time:
she slams
my days like doors.
Nothing is mine.
and when I dream images
of daring escapes through the snow
I find myself walking
always over a vast face
which is the land-
lady's, and wake up shouting.
She is a bulk, a knot
swollen in a space. Though I have tried
to find some way around
her, my senses
are cluttered by perception
and can't see through her.
She stands there, a raucous fact
blocking my way:
immutable, a slab
of what is real.
solid as bacon.
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