[1093] Variations on the Word "Sleep"

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
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

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

 	-- Margaret Atwood

I loved today's poem for the way it drew me in, for the almost palpable
sense that I was accompanying the narrator on her journey into the still
centre of her lover's subconscious. I was strongly reminded of Orpheus, and
his descent into hell to rescue Eurydice (very likely a deliberate
resonance, with the poem's underworld imagery of staircases and boats),
and somewhat, too, of C. L. Moore's "Jirel of Joiry" (nice '30s fantasy
novel).

As always, Atwood's imagery is vivid and immersive - astonishingly
immersive, when you consider how nondescriptive it is. The way the little
images - the wavering, lucent forest, the flame in two cupped hands, the
watery sun - weave together into a delicate, fantastic whole is nothing
short of magical.

And then, having drawn us down into the depths and back again, Atwood leaves
with the unexpected and beautiful image in the last verse. It is worth
noting how well the verse works both as a conclusion to the longer poem and
as an almost self-contained poem in its own right. Structurewise, too it
balances the first two lines, providing the 'reality' from which the poem
descends into a dreamscape, and to which it returns, enriched. Note the
change from the semidetached "I would like to watch you sleeping" to the
wholly involved "I would like to be the air that inhabits you".

On a deeper level, the poem is not so much about journey as about rhythm -
the visceral troughs and crests of breathing and sex and dreaming and sleep
cycles, the longer rhythms of relationships and life, and through it all,
the simultaneous suggestion of constancy, the calm still point through which
cycles pass, departing but always returning, unnoticed and necessary.

martin

From: "vivian eden" <vivian@>

Lovely. Good to have you back.

From: Connie Rockman <connie.rock@>

Martin,
I think there is another resonance in this poem.  The images - the
water, the boat, the silver branch, the long stairway - also come from
the folktale of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses."  Do you know it?  The
princesses are locked in their room every night, but in the morning
their shoes are worn out.  Many men try to find out where they go, but
only when a young man has some magical help with a cloak of
invisibility, is he able to follow them down a long stairway to an
underground forest and lake, where they are rowed across to dance all
night in a castle.  The young man breaks off three branches from the
enchanted forest before he follows them up the stairway to their bedroom
again.  It's a wonderful metaphor for sleep and dream, filled with all
those images of folklore.

Connie Rockman

From: "E. Bruce Johnson" <ebjohnson@>

There is a peacefulness and serenity in this poem that pervades it
throughout.  All of us have been there and have experienced sleep so it
is not a far leap to 'feel' this poem.  It expresses well the longing to
experience this serenity with a lover and travel with her to that secret
and at times scary place but to do so and fear nothing because we are
not alone.  The metaphors are perfect.  Although I'm not Atwood's number
one fan, she touched me with these romantic musings.

From: "Norman, Becca" <Becca.Norman@>

Variations on the Word "Sleep" - 

This is an excellent poetic expression of the Hero's Journey, complete with
mythic images, and complete with the layering of the _Heroine's_ Journey.
Those interested in Atwood's expressions here should also check out her
poems in You are Happy which include ones from the viewpoint of Circe
herself, for instance.

I have long valued this poem both for its literary allusions and for its
sweetly murmuring language.  My fiance and I have just selected it as our
marriage reading since it shows an awareness of trials to come and our roles
in nurturing each other through those trials, subconscious or conscious,
along with a marvelous personal involvement and depth (no pun intended) of
care not expressed in so many poems that give advice from a distance about
love and marriage.

-Becca

From: "Rosa Gaia Saunders" <scrumtulescent@>

Comments on Variations on the Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood

In examining a collection of poems through a writer’s career, many patterns 
come out clearly, as we can examine motifs and patterns that unite the body 
of work as a whole. Atwood’s distinctive style contains many unique 
elements- use of enjambment to create natural breaks and connections apart 
from the punctuation, visual and auditory repetition, and the constant 
tension and paradoxal relationship between opposites. However, all of these 
thematic and stylistic tools cannot characterize the author independently of 
the unique poems themselves. ‘Variations on the Word Sleep’ is a poem that 
seems at first an atypical Atwood work, with a much more romantic, nurturing 
style than many of her other poems. We may examine point of view, use of 
repetition, rhythm and change, the use of various images prevalent 
throughout Atwood’s works in the context of this poem and her poetry in 
general. Both the capability and weakness of language is explored. Atwood 
directly discusses words as well as using artistic tools such as enjambment 
to structurally manipulate language. Atwood’s unique style is further 
understood by the study of a poem seemingly different than her other bodies 
of work.  As we are led on a journey through a world created by language, we 
are invited to journey through the world of language itself.



Written in second person, there is a strong suggestion that this poem is 
written by a female to a male person in a relationship with her. Atwood 
often uses a strong feminine voice, and explores negative and positive 
aspects of female/ male roles. In many of her poems, she explores the female 
being at the mercy of man, in societies and couples, present and past. The 
idea of the ‘willing victim’ to the powerful neighbor is common not just in 
male/ female relationships, but in politics as well . However, the speaker 
seems not just willingly, but fervently desiring a position to nurture, to 
protect, to give life to and to follow in silent support. Atwood begins the 
poem with the statement: ‘I would like to watch you sleeping,/ which may not 
happen./ I would like to watch you,/ sleeping.’ Within this first stanza, 
she repeats the phrase ‘I would like’ following each period, and bringing 
the readers into the next thought or idea.  This phrase ‘I would like’ is 
gentle and undemanding, yet its constant repetition (seven times in all) 
acts as a brief refrain, suggesting a strong, clear voice in which the 
speaker desires all of these things on her own accord. While the poem is 
generous and nurturing, this constant return to what she ‘would like’ 
suggests a sense of self-objectification. Her ways to observe him go from 
fairly superficial, by ‘watch[ing him] sleeping’ to a sharing of the 
experience through her own subconscious state by ‘watch[ing him, while she 
herself is] sleep[ing]’, ‘sleep[ing] with [him]’, or even ‘enter[ing his] 
sleep’. The slightly changing repeated lines creates a sense of hesitation, 
creating a pattern of push and pull, rise and fall similar to the motion of 
waves in an ocean. This perfectly transitions into the image of ‘its smooth 
dark wave [sliding over her] head’ into the subconscious world, and drifting 
us into the next section of the poem.

The archetypal image of water as the subconscious is prevalent in Atwood 
poetry. However, Atwood often uses the idea of immersion in water as a means 
of destruction, by storms and often flooding. Flooding, when explored in a 
literal sense, often ends with drowning, death, and destruction, as explored 
in works like ‘After the Flood, We’ ‘The City Planners’ ‘Camera’ and ‘Winter 
Sleepers’. In this case, however, water signals the gentle descent to the 
unconscious world, rather than a destructive and mighty force. This is the 
first ‘Variation… on the Word Sleep’. The ‘smooth dark wave’ turns sleep 
from an action to a concrete substance with texture, color, atmosphere, 
motion, influence on others, and purpose. We are given the feeling of 
actually being immersed in the buoyant, thick, yet somehow weightless world 
of dreams, the luminescence and graceful shattering of the world seen 
through water. This next section can be separated not only by a new stanza, 
but also a change in setting, tone and cadence. Here we go into the world of 
his sleep itself, ‘that lucent/ wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its 
watery sun and three moons’.

Here, Atwood begins to play with words themselves to mirror ideas and 
images. ‘Bluegreen’ is written as one word (as opposed to turquoise or blue 
green), suggesting that the aspects making up this color are both unified, 
yet cannot be characterized by a product separate from them. This idea, and 
the color itself will essentially ‘paint’ the entire poem, as the only other 
colors mentioned are on a ‘small white flower’ or a ‘silver branch’ later on 
in the next stanza. The imagery is surreal and unmistakably feminine, such 
as the ‘watery sun’ and ‘three moons’. The watery sun could be drawing 
reference to the idea of a world seen through water, the sun coming through 
the water in folds of shattered light and adding to the ‘lucent, wavering’ 
atmosphere. As well, it could be seen as a synesthesia in which she 
describes the texture and feeling of the sun as being liquid. The last 
option is watery in the sense of dilute or weak light, such as in late 
evening. These small image details, while seemingly petty, make a massive 
difference in the underlying energy of the poem. In general, Atwood’s image 
motifs and metaphors are kept constant and extremely interconnected to the 
life meaning of the texts in which they reside.

The next prevalent image is that of the ‘cave where [he] must descend toward 
[his] worst fear. The cave goes well with the image of underwater, as well 
as the image of forests and shadows throughout this section of the piece. As 
he descends into it, he is essentially partaking in the archetypal quest for 
the unknown self, or perhaps, in his dreams, coming to terms with an 
external challenge that he is unable to face in the physical world. This 
‘fear’ could be anything inside the cave, whether it is an expected horror 
or the dread of the unknown. She desired to protect him, and as she 
expresses in the next stanza, she would like to give him ‘the silver/ 
branch, the small white flower, the one/ word that will protect [him]’. 
These three things seem to draw reference to the image of the three moons in 
he last stanza. The white and silver in the branch and flower is similar to 
the color of a moon, and because of this parallel structure the ‘word’ 
itself seems to be almost painted that same color. This is another example 
of Atwood’s playfulness with words, and exploration of language itself in 
her writing. While many of her general themes center around the inefficacy 
of language, she also explores the ability of language, especially poetry, 
to constructively reflect and dissect our world of tension, threat and 
conflict. The mention of a ‘word’ of some kind in one of Atwood’s poems 
immediately sparks a plethora of related ideas. What is this ‘word’? If we 
examine it as a motif, the only other time that the actual word ‘word’ is 
used is in the title, so could the word be sleep itself? In that case, is it 
her sleep that will protect him, is her own sleep just a small protective 
thing in the massive lucent forest of his sleep that they seem to share? On 
the other hand, the fact that she ‘would like to give him the one word’ 
suggests an impossible, and yet necessary need to encounter the perfect 
piece of speech to save him from the ‘grief at the center of [his] dream’. 
This could be a reflection of a writer’s constant desire to soothe, protect 
and illuminate through the power of words.

Atwood’s literary playfulness is further demonstrated in a structural sense, 
as she uses enjambment to create a sense of forward motion in the rhythm, 
and a sense of break in the ideas, placing emphasis on certain phrases in 
ways that punctuation may not. The effect of enjambment is more visual than 
auditory, as a reading of the poem- out loud or internally- will usually 
steer towards a more prosaic cadence, without a break after each line. 
Therefore we must be careful when defining enjambment as a ‘characteristic’ 
of Atwood’s work, as difficult to find a free verse poem by any author in 
which every single line is end- stopped.  Certain combinations of words are 
put together and therefore stand out that would not with punctuation alone. 
Gorgeous word clusters such as ‘carefully, a flame’ or ‘with you, to enter’ 
‘again and become’ come out more clearly as independent expressive phrases. 
The subject wants to protect him ‘from the grief at the center/ of your 
dream, from the grief/ at the center’. The importance of the phrase ‘from 
the grief at the center’ is first reaffirmed as the rest of the sentence 
(‘of your dream’) is enjambed into the next line. Next, the actual phrase 
‘from the grief / at the center’ is enjambed halfway through this time 
without the end of the phrase present at all. This slightly altered 
repetition draws the readers’ attention to certain details, similar to the 
first stanza. The ‘grief at the center’ seems, at first, to be the cave 
itself, in the center of the forest, the center of his dream. However, the 
independent phrase ‘the grief at the center’ brings up some evocative images 
and ideas. What is the grief at his center? There could be a reference to 
the center of the earth, such as hell or the underworld, and in that case he 
may be coming to terms with his own mortality. Other Atwood poems such as 
‘We Eat Out’ are written from the point of view of the partner of a dying 
person, exploring the speakers’ influence (and lack thereof) over the fear, 
grief and mortality of the person who is dying. The tone of the work is a 
fairly calm, conversational tone, with long, fairly fluid sentences. 
Structurally, however, the lines are broken into pairs of two, often split 
at unexpected moments, such as in the middle of the song title ‘Love is a 
Many/ Splendoured Thing’. This time, the enjambment extends more heavily 
into new stanzas rather than simply new lines. It gives the piece a 
distinctive prosody, a sense of disconnectedness and adds to the absurd 
nature of the piece. The dreamlike, resolute resonance throughout of 
Variations on the Word Sleep is very different from that of the ironic, 
farcical tone of ‘They Eat Out’, however the stanzaic and enjambed structure 
of both of these pieces acts to add to their individual style. Looking at 
structure itself is not as revealing to us about Atwood’s poetry than is 
examining her use of it as an expressive tool.

While the power of words themselves seems to be her greatest tool, she 
employs other, seemingly superhuman powers within this poetic allegory. She 
would like to ‘follow [him] up the long stairway again’. And eventually back 
to his body, which ‘lays beside’ her. In between, she wishes to morph into a 
‘boat that would row [him] back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands’. The 
image of both the boat and the hands is similar in shape and purpose, and 
the flame provides a great contrast to the water surrounding to floor of the 
boat. The evocative phrase ‘as you enter it as easily as breathing in’ 
contains a beautiful moment of ambiguity, combined with an inexplicable 
clarity. What is ‘it’ exactly? Is it the speakers’ body? This would give us 
the clearest sense that the subject of the poem is a man, involved in a 
sexual relationship with a woman. Even if ‘it’ has other figurative 
possibilities, such as the ‘flame in two cupped hands’, consciousness, the 
subjects’ own body or the dream itself, there is still this implication. 
This is also the point in the poem where we are brought to question whether 
the relationship is sexual, or even romantic. This is one of Atwood’s few 
‘love’ poems: Rarely does her work seem to take a traditionally positive 
position on the idea of love or a harmonious association with her partner in 
the relationship. When looking at the ‘Variations’ on the word sleep, we 
must take into consideration that of ‘sleeping’ with another person. How is 
partaking in a sexual activity connected to sleeping? Is it simply through 
associated actions- such as sleeping together after sex- or, do people, on 
some level, see sex as a mutual descent into a dreamlike state, a uniting of 
two partners subconscious worlds? The poem ‘Variations on the Word Love’, 
also arising in Atwood’s ‘True Stories’ anthology, has a similar idea: 
addressing the literary, societal, universal, and personal aspects of a word 
that seems to determine, refute, and describe everything worth mention. It 
means nothing, and everything, yet within its incredible ambiguity it holds 
power. Rather than exploring these issues directly, Atwood plays with the 
connotations of this word- positive or negative- and pulls us into a 
electrically personal text about how the ‘word’s too small for the two of 
[them]…not enough… but it will have to do’. It is this aspect especially 
that makes Atwood’s work so distinctive, poignant, and profound: the 
realization of the power of words, the boundless possibilities of language, 
yet their essential futility in the face of the inexpressibly livid.

As we are brought back the Atwood’s more contemplative tone of the first 
stanza, she states that she would ‘like to be the air that inhabits [him] 
for only a moment/… that unnoticed/ & that necessary’. This may seem, at 
first, to be a resignation of sorts: she is becoming a selfless and useful 
female prototype. However there is a tone of impassioned tenderness in this, 
and this tenderness is all too fast mistaken for vulnerability. While Atwood 
acknowledges the way that women are bound or oppressed by typically ‘female’ 
roles set out for them, yes acknowledges the tension and harmony between the 
male female polarities. She acknowledges female qualities in language, 
environment and humanity and embraces them in a strong, perceptive and 
feminine way. Along with the polarities of male and female, we are 
introduced to a delicate tapestry of opposites: order and chaos, day and 
night, reality and dreams. As the ‘air that surrounds him’ she is both 
wholly involved and completely detached. In his dream, she is deeply 
intimate with him, yet removed from his world. ‘For just a moment’ she is 
everything, surrounding him, within him, yet without him: she is unnoticed, 
yet in many ways he is arbitrary.

Variation of the Word Sleep is unlike almost every other Atwood poem. It may 
even be called- if one chooses to be bold with words- a love poem connecting 
the two polarities of the word ‘sleep’. To sleep with someone- as a sexual 
act, is very different than two people physically falling asleep 
side-by-side. Atwood explores the ways in which these worlds are essentially 
connected to each other and how sleeping together acts as a uniting force. 
It is gentle and nurturing. Through deeper observation, we realize that 
Atwood has utilized her artistic tools and commanding tone to create a poem 
both light and resounding. At its core- and rich electric resonance- this is 
a distinctively Atwood piece of work.