{"id":4958,"date":"2025-05-01T12:08:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T16:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/?p=4958"},"modified":"2025-05-01T12:08:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T16:08:52","slug":"a-poem-for-a-thursday-301","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/01\/a-poem-for-a-thursday-301\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for a Thursday #301"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Sonya Lynne<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Margaret Atwood is probably best known for her novel The Handmaid’s Tale<\/em> but she is also a poet, literary critic and inventor. She invented the LongPen which allowed people to write in ink remotely by means of a tablet and the internet. Atwood’s poetry addresses women’s concerns and the suffering they endure. As Atwood has said, “My women suffer because most of the women I talk to seem to have suffered.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

You Begin
Margaret Atwood<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Margaret Atwood is probably best known for her novel The Handmaid’s Tale but she is also a poet, literary critic and inventor. She invented the LongPen which allowed people to write in ink remotely by means of a tablet and the internet. Atwood’s poetry addresses women’s concerns and the suffering they endure. As Atwood has said, “My women suffer because most of the women I talk to seem to have suffered.” You begin this way:this is your hand,this is your eye,that is a fish, blue and flaton the paper, almostthe shape of an eye.This is your mouth, this is an Oor a moon, whicheveryou like. This is yellow.Outside the windowis the rain, greenbecause it is summer, and beyond thatthe trees and then the world,which is round and has onlythe colors of these nine crayons.This is the world, which is fullerand more difficult to learn than I have said.You are right to smudge it that waywith the red and thenthe orange: the world burns.Once you have learned these wordsyou will learn that there are morewords than you can ever learn.The word hand floats above your handlike a small cloud over a lake.The word hand anchorsyour hand to this table,your hand is warm stoneI hold between two words.This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,which is round but not flat and has more colorsthan we can see.It begins, it has an end,this is what you willcome back to, this is your hand.You BeginMargaret Atwood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem-for-a-thursday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4958"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4961,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions\/4961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}