Margaret Atwood's "Variations on the Word Love"
Canadian Poet Examines Eroticism in her Poem on Love
Dec 30, 2008
Love, the narrator begins, “is a word we use to plug holes with” (1-2). The poet is lowering sexual pleasure instead of elevating it: “How do we know / it isn’t what goes on at the cool / debaucheries of slugs under damp / pieces of cardboard?” (13-6). Atwood is telling the reader that sex is something the lowest animal can and does do, it is not beautiful in itself.
Though not disdainful of the idea or act of sex—the same lines used to describe slug intercourse also allude to the naturalness of the act—the narrator is instead put off by the elevation of sex in love’s name. A height of contempt is reached in line 19, “Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising / their glittering knives in salute.” The reader can hear the sarcastic and angry delight in mocking the soldiers' cries for companionship. There is also the phallic symbolism of the knives’ “raising.”
Atwood, in the second stanza, castrates the idea of love being pure lust, “This word / is far too short for us” (22-3). The reader also hears the poet’s sense of humor: size matters. The poem moves then into the first truly transcendent thought: “…too sparse / to fill those deep bare / vacuums between the stars / that press on us with their deafness” (24-7). Atwood turns back on earlier allusions to intercourse and makes the imagery of the second stanza more emotive than physical.
How the Poem’s Construction Reflects its Content
The construction of this poem is free verse. It has no discernible rhyme scheme or meter. The most prominent literary device is enjambment. Enjambment is a term used to describe a line of poetry that does not end with a punctuation mark but instead flows into the next line. Conversely, a line of poetry ending with say, a period or comma, would be defined as end-stopped.
In the fifth line Atwood writes, “like real hearts. Add lace” (5). Her use of enjambment here does two things. First, it provides an explanation of what she implies lace should be added to—hearts; and second, it summons up an image of the red construction paper hearts that children make. She is now implying that humans are conditioned to think of love in a particular way.
The next line augmented by enjambment is line 19: “Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising.” If the sentence were continued the reader would see the knives being raised but instead the idea of sexual arousal is presented. The knives already were phallic but Atwood solidifies the idea, increasing her tone of sarcasm.
Enjambment Reflects Eroticism
Poetry is not a science. The tools a poet uses have to be taken in context. There are no set-in-stone rules governing their use. Atwood is writing about sex. Enjambment is the flowing together of separate thoughts. It doesn’t seem unreasonable then to link them together.
Just as it’s important to examine the use of enjambment, it’s important to examine when enjambment is not used. The word “love” is used five times in the poem (including the title) and there are five end-stopped lines. It comes back to the narrator’s argument of love versus lust. The narrator has told us what lust is but only secretly what love is. Love should be shouted and love should be saluted, love is deaf and love is fear. But, as Atwood concludes, there are truly only two options in the end: “hold on or let go.”
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