margaret_atwood
ovenbird Once, while doing my Masters at UBC, I came to breakfast to find Margaret Atwood nibbling on a bagel. It was like encountering a unicorn. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was going to have breakfast with Margaret Atwood! We were going to talk about Canadian Literature! It was going to be the best breakfast conversation of my life! It was not.

I was struggling to gather my thoughts and my heart was beating so hard I could taste it, but I took the seat across from Margaret Atwood. I was desperately trying to figure out how to open the conversation when she looked up from her bagel and said, dryly, “and what do you do?” I told her I was doing my masters in literature, with a particular interest in Canadian novels. She literally rolled her eyes. Then she sighed audibly and said, “Oh. You’re one of *those*.”

She went back to eating her bagel. I choked down some toast. I picked up my tray and slunk away, tail between my legs, wondering what exactly I was doing with my life.

Margaret Atwood, I will forgive you this cruel dismissal, because your words still skitter through my brain with the staying power of cockroaches. I readSong of the Wormsand my own sigh signals awe rather than annoyance. I wish you could have met me in my delight, but you had no time for one like me, just a worm myself, so exposed, so vulnerable, so desperate to eat your words for breakfast.

Song of the Worms
Margaret Atwood

We have been underground too long,
We have done our work,
We are many and one,
We remember when we were human

We have lived among roots and stones,
We have sung but no one has listened,
We come into the open air
At night only to love

Which disgusts the soles of boots,
Their leather strict religion.

We know what a boot looks like
When seen from underneath,
We know the philosophy of boots,
Their metaphysic of kicks and ladders.
We are afraid of boots
But contemptuous of the foot that needs them.
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epitome of incomprehensibility Thanks for sharing this. I hadn't read it (or remembered it if I had). It's what I like about Mary Oliver too - when she combines (non-human) animal and human behaviour, drawing on shared threads and dancing on the line between what we know and what we don't.

Why dancing? I don't know. I'm tired. I was thinking of threads, and then lines, and then I guess line dancing.

I hope you weren't discouraged by her seeming dismissal. She wasn't communicating well. It seems to me like she was trying to be funny, but someone can't just assume the other person automatically gets their tone/intent, however famous they are.

I'd have probably been just as tongue-tied or more...and much later come up with a "smart" answer like, "Well, it's your fault for writing it in the first place" - said with an inoffensive but spirited grin (which is not *actually* something I can summon up if I'm put on the spot, but imagination lends smoothness to the stammers of reality).
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e_o_i (To be fair...how the hell would *I* know what she meant? But I still think she communicated badly, whatever she meant, because she didn't appear to consider how she might come across as intimidating.) 250510
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e_o_i edits (also, "them" not "it" because the subject was "novels" (my mind replaced it with "literature")) 250510
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nr she definitely has dry humour.

i remember making her laugh on the phone once. she called to talk to my boss, and he wasn't in, so she asked if i had his cell number. i gave it to her, and told her she's welcome to try it, but it's always a gamble as to whether he'll answer it.
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ovenbird e_o_i I like the same thing about Mary Oliver's poetry (and Margaret Atwood's too!). I love it when the human and more than human worlds start to become indistinguishable.

And nr it's funny you've had a run in with Margaret Atwood too.

I would like to believe she was just exercising dry wit in the exchange I wrote about, but I got the distinct sense that she wanted me to go away so she could eat breakfast in peace. I do wish I had come up with a witty comeback though!
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