“Lions don’t know they are lions.
They don’t know how brave they are.” – 3/5 stars!

In Dearly, Margaret Atwood’s first collection of poetry in over a decade, Atwood addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature and – zombies. Her new poetry is introspective and personal in tone, but wide-ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived.

While many are familiar with Margaret Atwood’s fiction—including her groundbreaking and bestselling novels The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, Oryx and Crake, among others—she has, from the beginning of her career, been one of our most significant contemporary poets. And she is one of the very few writers equally accomplished in fiction and poetry.  This collection is a stunning achievement that will be appreciated by fans of her novels and poetry readers alike.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t love it!

The majority of the poems were about travelling, her sister – I’m assuming she lost a sister from what I’ve read – and the environment. There are also sprinkles of other topics here and there – like the poem where she talks about her grandmother, for example.

One thing I found interesting is the amount of animal references this book has. The author mentions so many animals,from spiders, slugs, birds, wolves, bears, whales and much more! She’s clearly very inspired by nature and I loved how she took that inspiration and made clever metaphors.

I will say I liked how the collection of poems felt so personal. It’s obvious she poured her heart into these poems because it shows. Some of my favorites were “If There Were No Emptiness” and “Shadow”. She is clearly very talented and I’m surprised this is her first collection of poetry in over a decade!

There were some poems I liked and others I didn’t like as much. The book overall just wasn’t my style, so I’m going to keep myself neutral in this one. Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it.

xoxo,