Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

The poem I present is written by Margret Atwood, a must read author in Canadian literature .

The rebellious tone of this work resonated with me for days after I first read it. In a world which continues cling to the belief that my lifestyle is somehow shameful, this poem is refreshing. I find myself repeating the same speech over and over to those close to me: A run-of-the-mill routine life is abhorrent in my eyes. This freedom of body and spirit has become fiercely desirable and I cannot imagine a different life. I am not exploited, I am liberated. Companionship has offered me control over my life that most experience only in the old age of retirement. The ability to explore the world through the passionate eyes of my lovers has moved my soul. The insight I have gained into the world and the human condition could not be taught in any other school. I am comforted that my secret liaisons do not see body parts or empty dreams, but a caring heart that needs care in turn.

Atwood speaks of the eyes that look at us as foreigners, of those who have forgotten how to dance.

We dance, and we feel. We are whole and close to divinity:

You think I’m not a goddess?
Try me

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

by Margaret Atwood

The world is full of women
who’d tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they’d say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I’ve a choice
of how, and I’ll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it’s all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything’s for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can’t. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape’s been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there’s only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it’s the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can’t hear them.
And I can’t, because I’m after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don’t let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I’ll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That’s what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They’d like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look–my feet don’t hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I’m not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you’ll burn

Atwood work often appears on Canadian high school reading lists, as the educational system encourages youth to appreciate and support home grown talent. A poet, author, critic and feminist, her work is unique and powerful. My first run in with Atwood was Edible Woman, exploring a woman’s life as she becomes conflicted with her engagement. She feels consumed by gender stereotypes, clothing playing a special role in her detachment. She begins to sympathize with food, making it difficult for her to eat. The main character bakes a pink cake in the shape of a woman. She dares her finance to eat it: “This is what you really want,” she declares.

My next Atwood work was The Handmaid’s Tale, a wonderful dystopian piece. She creates a world where Christian fundamentalists violently overthrow the government and take charge of the US. The protagonist is fertile, and thus considered a valuable commodity. Since she had been divorced before the laws forbid it, she is unfit to be a wife, and is forced to serve as a concubine, destined to bare the children of her owner. She is stripped of her identity, given the slave name “Of Fred”.