Variations on the Word Sleep
By Margaret Atwood
In Variations on the Word Sleep the narrator of the poem immediately addresses his/her conscience need to connect with the other person, and they also recognize the hopelessness of this goal: "I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen"(1-2). The opening to the poem, as we see here, could be considered typical of Atwood's writing in the sense that one person longs to bond with another, and recognizes the difficulty. It is this type of vulnerability that we have come to expect in Margaret Atwood's writings, because, as with many…
