Habitation by Margaret Atwood
This one might be a serious contender for the wedding poem.
Habitation
By Margaret Atwood
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
An Atwood anecdote.
I attended her reading at a bar in Toronto, once, in the early 90s or so. She’d just published the poetry collection ‘Good Bones,’ and was helping the local woman’s shelter with a fund raising. Lots of media, other writers, the well off, the well read, and the well intentioned, all crowded into the main stage area at the Bamboo club. Quietly listening.
Someone asked her why they had picked this somewhat rough club for the reading. The place was well known in a run down dance club way. And Atwood was well established by then, so she could have picked anywhere she liked, gotten the space donated, and drawn a crowd.
She was a bit taken aback by the question. She liked the place! She talked about how it reminded her of starting out as a poet and writer in Yorkville in the 1960s. Now a posh shopping district, that area of Toronto was the run-down literary headquarters of English Canada. Head shops, coffee shops, and all the attending artists, eccentrics, and all else that passed as bohemian society in Canada at the time.
I had a sense that doing the reading that night, in that place, revived old memories for her. Ones she wouldn’t trade for better lighting. As she talked, you could even sense she partly missed those beginning times. Maybe she was tired of everyone standing on the edge of her every word — she could read a phone book and have people’s attention — and longed for that time and place where her words had to earn their own way. Maybe looking back on her anonymous youth.
I’ll always remember her smiling and reminiscing that night about how the coffee house barista would be quiet during most poems, but always seemed to find a latte to loudly steam to express his feelings about poems he didn’t care for. Personal displeasure made concrete through the use of a coffee maker. She didn’t say if any of her work had ever been ’steamed,’ but you could sense she was aware of the possibility of it when she was doing her readings. And somehow she liked the challenge of the crowd.
It was like that for her that evening. Even well established, she was there reading new work, and a quite different work, and she was looking forward to some broad, immediate feedback. A challenge. A bartender rattling glasses? Chair scraps and coughs. Or undivided attention. Once more into the breach.
Maybe that evening and that barista will find a way into her novels. If not, this will be a small footnote to her writing. Perhaps even writers can become attached to the adrenalin rush of public reading, and long for the days when the chances they took were bigger.
Doug,
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing your Atwood story and thoughts. I really don’t know much about her, and I’ve never seen her read. In fact, I’ve been to very few poetry readings. I have, however, been to many singer/songwriter concerts, many in intimate settings. I love hearing the stories (or even bits and pieces of them) behind the songs, or the poems. And I know how special it feels to know you’re hearing new stuff. So I’ll share an anecdote with you…
I saw Eliza Gilkyson perform many times when I lived in Austin. My favorite show was at the Cactus Cafe in 2005. She was sick and her voice sounded even rougher than usual, though it was still incredible. She said she had been writing a lot and played us mostly new songs that she had written very recently (even within the last week!). I was utterly blown away by a song called Jedidiah that was about an ancestor of hers who fought for Washington in the American Revolution. She had always known his name (Jedidiah Huntington), but didn’t know much about him until she googled him and found his correspondence available. So she bought it and finally got around to reading the letters. She said they were amazing and she had to write a song. Many of the lyrics are directly quoted from the letters. I had chills while listening to this song and I waited for it to come out on CD for months. The song was released on Paradise Hotel, which is an amazing album. I’ve listened to it countless times and it still gives me chills every time.
Jedidiah 1777
By Eliza Gilkyson
jedidiah out in the snow
walking the frozen trenchlines
wet boots and his wool coat coming apart at the seams
rations of hard baked dough
handfuls of melting snow
what else can a man live on but his dreams
not 20 miles away
in the mansions of philadelphia
loyalists laying their money down on the king
we’ve provision enough for the day
but if victory were just for the wealthy
our noble cause wouldn’t be worth
the hardship we’re suffering
send the cloth for a good waistcoat
I dream of your hearth and the fields of oat
I wake to the drum and the trembling note of the fifer
may it please god in his great mercy
to shelter our friends and our family
I remain your son most faithfully,
jedidiah
I have seen a man who has seen a man
who has heard the king
tell of his intention our independence to declare
to peace will undoubtedly bring
a great revolution in commerce
may it be our rightful fortune to come in for a share
my regards to a certain miss moore
I’ve stated my honorable intentions for her
that upon my return from this necessary war
she will be my wife
may it please god in his great mercy
to restore the joys of domesticity
salutations to the family
jedidiah
I rejoice that the cause we’re engaged in
is in the hands of an almighty sovereign
who I doubt not is accomplishing
the ends of his desire
my love to you and the fair miss moore
spare me a bottle from the cellar store
and in my name let the contents pour
jedidiah
Just listening to Eliza Gilkyson at your advice — yes, beautiful songs. With Valentine’s Day coming up, I can’t help but add a favorite Atwood poem she read that evening:
Variations on the Word Love
Margaret Atwood
This is a word we use to plug holes with.
It’s the right size for those warm blanks in speech, for those red heart- shaped vacancies on the page
that look nothing like real hearts.
Add lace and you can sell it.
We insert it also in the one empty space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions.
There are whole magazines with noth much in them but the word love,
you can rub it all over your body and you can cook with it too.
How do we know it isn’t what goes on
at the cool debaucheries of slugs under damp pieces of cardboard?
As for the weed- seedlings noshing their tought snouts up among the lettuces,
they shout it, Love!
Love! sing the soldiers,
raising their glittering knives in salute.
Then there’s the two of us.
This word is far too short for us,
it has only four letters,
too sparse to fill thsoe deep bare vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish to fall into,
but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will have to do.
It’s a single vowel
in this metallic silence,
a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder and pain,
a breath,
a finger grip on a cliffside.
You can hold on or let go.