Elegiac yet cautionary, Atwood's first new collection since 2007's The Door revolves around themes of mortality, environmental jeopardy, memory, feminism, and loss. These carefully tuned lyric poems, many lightly rhymed, often bear bitter witness to humankind's self-destructive treatment of both planet ("Whatever we touch turns red") and spirit ("we don't have minds/ as such these days, but tiny snarls/ of firefly neural pathways/ signalling no/yes/no"). A lifelong activist, Atwood nicknames our geologic age The Plasticine, characterized by a civilization "spewing out mountains of whatnot," filling oceans with a "neo-seaweed/ of torn bags, cast wrappers, tangled rope/ shredded by tides and rocks." The final section of poems, haunted by "the shape of an absence," are poignant with the memory of novelist Graeme Gibson, her partner for nearly a half-century who passed in 2019. VERDICT Atwood's flare for precise metaphor in no way softens her delivery, as when she observes "We are a dying symphony." Combining the wit of Dorothy Parker with the wisdom of Emily Dickinson, Atwood adds a steely grace and richness all her own. If there is beauty in despair, one may find it here.--Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY

Atwood's first books were poetry collections; decades later, she infuses her newest poems with the flinty wit and surefire lucidity readers cherish in her best-selling, influential fiction, including The Testaments (2019). Spiked with surprising juxtapositions and wily delight in language, at times mordant, frequently hilarious, and always unflinching, Atwood's poems are rooted in nature, with spotlights on spiders, cicadas, and slug sex. Droll spoofs on werewolves, the Wizard of Oz, and movies about aliens offer incisive contrasts between reality and the imagination, while romantic sentiments are decisively detonated. Birds are ever-present, tragically so when they crash into our bright night windows. With a cascade of environmental concerns in mind, the poet asks: "Oh children, will you grow up in a world without birds?" Naming our era the Plasticene, Atwood decries the plague of plastic destroying our oceans. Contrasting our deep past with our reckless present, she muses: "Everything once had a soul." The loss of a loved one, the ravages of age, and stark generational changes prompt Atwood, as the collection's title suggests, to embrace her "dearly beloved" and call on us to hold all of life dearly.

Atwood (The Testaments) returns with a sardonic and sagacious masterpiece to add to her significant oeuvre. Fantasy, love, sex, feminism, and mortality are explored with discursive poise and narrative cohesion. Atwood has a knack for creating piquant emotional textures, infusing ideas, experiences, and objects with palpable life, as when she envisions the negative space that will remain after the death of her partner: "That's who is waiting for me:/ an invisible man/ defined by a dotted line:// the shape of an absence/ in your place at the table,// ...a rustling of the fallen leaves,/ a slight thickening of the air." Time is perhaps the most ubiquitous variable in her poems; Atwood fuses past and present, resulting in prescient nostalgia for the current moment and for the future. But there is hope here, too, in spaces created by voids. In "If There Were No Emptiness," she writes: "That room has been static for me so long:/ an emptiness a void a silence/ containing an unheard story/ ready for me to unlock.// Let there be plot." Combining dignified vulnerability, lyrical whimsy, and staunch realism, Atwood offers a memorable collection that emboldens readers to welcome disillusionment. (Nov.)