Variation on the word Love

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to explore the boundaries of our knowledge by exploring and analyzing Margaret Atwood's “Variations on the Word Love”. In this poem the poet defines a wide range of different types of love. As described by the Poet, each aspect of love we experience is completely different and unique.

Discussion & Analysis

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, to Carl Atwood, an entomologist, and Margaret Killam, a nutritionist. She spent her childhood accompanying her father on his researches in the wilderness of Quebec. Graduating from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in 1961, she received an M.A. from Radcliffe in 1962 and did some graduate work at Harvard University, beginning a thesis on Gothic fiction. Atwood's first published work, Double Persephone (1961), was a book of poetry exploring the mythological figure Persephone. Her most important collection of verse, The Circle Game (1966) uses Gothic imagery to explore issues of gender; for example, the first poem, "This Is a Photograph of Me," is narrated by a dead woman: "The photograph was taken / the day after I drowned." Atwood's first novel, Edible Woman (1969) is a darkly comic tale of a woman who fears marriage and stops eating (Atwood, p. 82).

In recent years, Atwood has published Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009), dystopic novels that contain many of the same characters. Both novels focus on a society destroyed by technology and commercialization. Atwood also published The Penelopiad (2005), a retelling of the story of Penelope, wife of Odysseus. In 2010, Atwood shared the $1 million Dan David Prize with the Indian author Amitav Ghosh at Tel Aviv University.

The poem “Variations on the world love” is divided in to two concrete segments. The purpose of dividing this poem in to two unique sections is directly related to defining and assessing the word “love” in two unique ways. In the first stanza, Atwood has defined love as “expression” i.e. the aspect of expressing love, where as the second stanza is dedicated to define love as “feeling”. There is also a difference in tone of Margaret Atwood is two stanzas, this is what makes the poem unique.

The first stanza has described her attitude of love quite acrimoniously, this is also evident in the poem when she defines love as “a word we use to plug holes with”. This line proves ...