rk may seem fearlessly feministic, in the sense that it brings explores female condition without reserve or embarrassment, Atwood’s poetry probes into a genderless consciousness to explore feelings of human connectionedness and painful separations.The first poem that will be examined in this paper is “Variations on the Word Sleep.” The narrator of the poem immediately addresses their conscience need to connect with the other person, and they also recognize the hopelessness of this goal: “I would like to watch you sleeping, / which may not happen”. The opening to the poem, as we see here, could be considered typical of Atwood’s writing in the sense that one person longs to bond with another, and recognizes the difficulty. It is this type of vulnerability that we have come to expect in Margaret Atwood's writings, because as with many feminist writings, we are aware of the power struggle between men and women, and even between women. But this poem refrains from identifying sexes; it only discusses a deeply internal need of one person for another, who is on a journey through he dark maze of their consciousness. The first stanza evolves from a simple plea from the genderless speaker to watch their lover sleep, to a deeper, spiritual need. Atwood chooses to remain ambiguous in this respect, which helps a wider audience identify with the work. The poem also has merit because within seven short, simplistic lines we glide from a gentle longing to a love complex and intense, with two minds merging together in a dream: “I would like to watch you, / sleeping. I would like to sleep/ with you, to enter/ your sleep as its smooth dark wave/ slides over my head.” The action of the poem continues to evolve as Atwood carries the reader through what appears to be a lover’s dream or fantasy. The narrator at first wishes only to watch their lover sleep, then they desire to enter the same sleep w...
