SOURCE: “Blood Taboo: A Response to Margaret Atwood's ‘Lives of the Poets’,” in Mid-American Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1992, pp. 111–15.

In the following essay, Nelson considers the poetic language of Atwood's “Lives of the Poets.”

I am a poet and represent an interpretive community of poets when I read. When I read the name Margaret Atwood as the author of a story, I know I am about to read words which I will interpret as poetic. I read Atwood's line, “An ice cube would be nice. Image of the Coke-and-ice” (“Lives of the Poets” 183). I will read it to myself aloud creating the poetry I expect. I pick “ice,” “nice,” and “Coke-and-ice.” I recall from the ancient poetry cave a couple lines from Gertrude Stein's prose, “To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays”: “And it was ice and it was so. / And it was dates and it was snow...