Margaret Atwood is a Canadian author who has achieved fame in the twenty-first century. Best known for her novels, she is also an accomplished poet. Her poetry is, however, much less accessible than many of her novels accounting for the prominence of the latter over the former. She writes poems very often about the things in this life which make her sad.
She uses her poetry as an outlet for social advocacy. Often this translates to feminist poems, though lacking some the cavalier overtness of her peers. In "Hesitations outside the Door" Atwood takes the domestic scene and her own apprehensions about it into the internal realm. She is not interested in effecting change necessarily, but she does want to tell the stories which are not being told, such as a woman's internal dialogue with herself about her role as a woman. "Marrying the Hangman" is an anecdotal poem about a real woman who did the best she could in a world which was rigged to discriminate against her.
Similarly, Atwood lends her voice to those who have none. She writes often in defense of animal rights. "Bull Song" is a tragic piece from the bull's perspective, before and after he is massacred for sport in a fight. Atwood's imagination is both provocative and compelling without being condemnatory. In "They eat out" she writes about the injustice of serving animals the way they are served in many corporate restaurants. The allure of consumerism conceals the horror that is the death of living beings.
