''Two-Headed Poems'' is the eighth book of

poems Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

author

Margaret Atwood Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and an inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight chi ...

. It was first published in 1978. The title of the collection refers to its central cycle of poems, which concerns a pair of Siamese twins as a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...

for Canada. The twins dream of separation, and speak sometimes singly, sometimes together within the poems. The tension of their desire for separation and their inescapable connection evokes the French-English tensions in Canada and Quebec separatism. These tensions are also evoked in the image of two

deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

singers, an image which implies that neither English-Canada nor Quebec listens to each other. However, the metaphors of ''Two-Headed Poems'' can also be interpreted on a more personal level to refer to the tensions between lovers.

Notes

External links

1978 poetry books Poetry by Margaret Atwood Canadian poetry collections Oxford University Press books {{poetry-collection-stub