Unheard Melodies Composed in Margaret Atwood’s “Notes towards a Poem that Can Never be Written”

Unheard Melodies Composed in Margaret Atwood’s “Notes towards a Poem that Can Never be Written”

G. VIDHYA LAKSHMI,

R. YAMUNA,

M. Phil,

Department of English and

Foreign Languages,

Alagappa University,

Karaikudi.

Literature is a reflection of life, it reflects humanity. Both the shades, constructive and destructive, of life can be portrayed through a literary piece that can revive the spirit of oneness among the minds of people, depict the follies in people and put right their minds and can mould them overcoming the defects.Poetry has a special place in literary arenaas it continues to be one of the powerful tools of expression.Mathew Arnold in his The Study of Poetry points out poetry as “Criticism of life” and it guides and consoles humanity replacing the places of even religion, philosophy which has already lost its vigour and science which will be incomplete and pointless without Literature. Thus, poetry “the breath and finer spirit of Knowledge” as said by Wordsworth, also governs humanity in right path and gives voice for the voiceless. Hence, human rights go hand in hand with literature.

Margaret Atwood, a prolific Canadianwriter, uses poetry a weapon to pinpoint the denied human rights in her poetry collection, “True Stories” (1981). In this poetry collection, as in her fictions like Surfacing, Lady Oracle, Life BeforeMan, The Handmaid’s Tale, also ruminates on oppression and injustice, on genders and their discontents.Atwood dedicates the title poem of this collection to her poet friendCarolyn Forche as her conversation with Atwood regarding her book The Country Between Us which inspired her in writing the poetry collection. In her heart-wrenching poem “Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never Be Written” in this collection, expresses the lack of freedom for expression of thoughts and sufferings in a land subjugated by a powerful regime and highlights the plight of women writers silenced and doubly suppressed by the patriarchal and colonized scenario,specifically the tortures they have gone through, a human rights violation, as well as other traumas to the female body.

The title of the poem “Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never Be Written” seems to be pessimistic. But, as a contrary it is written by Atwood that speaks for all who suffers due to oppression and for the women writers confined beyond the geographical boundaries. Being a humanist, in her poem she encourages poets to write, express their thoughts and fight against injustice at any cast with courage asthe poem has an optimistic note “Elsewhere you must write this poem” (Atwood, 1981).

     The poem “Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never Be Written” commences with the description of Atwood’s mother land, Canada, a third world nation, has turned as a land that inhabits human minds rather than inhabited by the citizens where imagination, the process of thinking, the question “Why” are strictly prohibited. She calls it as a period of famine. Poets are never allowed to write poems that shed light on the sufferings of people suppressed, if written,poets are killed for revealing the injustice done to the people by the imperialists.

     Atwood vividly conjures up a woman poet’s sufferings through the lines “She is dying because she said/ she is dying for the sake of the word” (Atwood, 1981). Just because she has tried to unfold the trauma of humans with stripped ofrights for speech, is brutally treated. This shows the violence against the innocents by the upper hands that hit hard the people speaking on the oppressor’s hypocrisy.

Hence in her later work Margaret Atwood says:

                        

The power of such suppression is to silence the voice, abolish the word, so that  the only voiceand words left are those of the ones in power. Elsewhere, the word itself is thought tohave power; that's why so much trouble is taken to silence it.(Atwood 1982, 350).

Through  these lines Atwood articulates her voice for the basic human rights most essentially freedom of speech like Milton who says “Give me Liberty to Know, to utter and to argue freely  according to Conscience above all liberties” one of the finer essences of Areopagitica.

      The woman poet is further tortured by over exposure to unending light that spoils her vision as her writings are on the events that she catches sight of and her fingers are pricked with needle left her without fingers to write poem and to kill her brain. Thus, every poem written by her in the land is compared to a brain-child delivered by a mother after enduring the unendurable birth pangs and remains as an evidence for the suffering of the woman writer for the skill in her, producing an art work. Atwood says the aggression, against the poets, are continuing it should be stopped.

     The poem not only portrays the poet’s sufferings but also the audience who pay heed to the writings and the wrong done to the innocents. The people witnessing the cruelties are made blind or allowed to see with “razor across their eyeball”. This implies the audience not to see or hear anything and restrict people paying attention to the miseries happening around them. Thus, Atwood makes an indelible mark in the minds of the readers and make them feel the agonies the creative artists have undergone especially a women writer.

            Towards the end Atwood mourns on the poets’ death. In such a land, that decides the life of the suppressed people. At every point they are not provided even with the basic rights to speak, hear and see and allowed to speak, hear and see only the things fixed by the powerful authorities in a patriarchal and colonized land. She says a poem with vitality carrying truth should be written “elsewhere” not in the subdued Canada. Yet Atwood,As Davey points, "The result is paradoxically a poem about no poem, with a 'wordless' speaker giving us words" (Davey 1984, 48), has successfully recorded the untold miseries of the Canadians subjected to violence and hammer homes her feministic perspectives and as a creative writer encourages the writers to pen their thoughts without fear with her poetic strength.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret.True Stories. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Atwood, Margaret."An End to Audience," Second Words: Selected Critical Prose. Toronto:

Anansi, 1982. 334-57.

Davey, Frank. Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1984.