poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

Those last lines speak to me of how
many of us would like to be with our
loved one. that unnoticed and that
necessary... well said, margaret

Beautiful words that elicit feelings that flow through the reader, as we travel the same imaginative pathway as the writer - through something common turned into something lovely and warm, embedding the desire to return again and again. Certainly this is something to keep handy to share with others - and discuss!

If someone I loved were to write this poem to me, the grief at the center of my dream would no longer exist because I would have found absolute intimacy with my boyfriend.
How soon is now?

hmm...unoticed and necessary..could it be talking about death? a lover wants to help make death easier for you..."follow you up the long stairway AGAIN, when you die u go up" the "air that inhabits you for a moment" death is there for a moment and then your finished and departed...

"I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary."

To be that unnoticed means that there's a certain intimacy to the relationship. You can just be with the other person and although they don't have to acknowledge you every moment, you're still as necessary to them as the air they breathe.

I would like to watch you sleeping,
Which may not happen.

This seems to imply that the words are not to an existing lover / partner. Regardless of analysis, a beautifully tender poem.

I think this poem is about death and about a loved one that could be or not be a lover. Because first of all the title is a variation on the word sleep, and if the words sleep and dream are replaced by death and dying then the poem makes sence and explains the absolute and nessesary part at the ending. I think that in this context the poem is rendered even more beautiful than before.

I really don't think the poetic voice is talking about death because it wants to be "the boat that would row you back carefully." Therefore, the journey that the loved one is on ends up where it started. Even if you were reincarnated (supposing you believed in that sort of thing), you wouldn't end up where you started.

I've read this poem a jillion times. It is definitely one of my favorite love poems. It speaks of a love so true and selfless it doesn't even wish to be acknowledged as it supports and nourishes the object of the love. Love like that seems pretty rare nowadays.

i believe this poem could be about sexual intercourse: "row you back carefully" the rowing motion during intercourse, and "where your body lies beside me, and your enter it as easily as breathing in" and the part about air could be the aftermath, breathing hard and then the urge for love going away

I think this beautiful poem reflects poet's deep crave for integrity. Atwood wrote in her Susanna Moodie's journal "I am a word in a foreign language", articulating a keen anxiety of her protagonist, who was lost in the wilderness . Dreams and sleep of the loved one, real or imaginary, is the same wilderness, "terra incongnita", a poet longs to re-create as her own world and guide like Virgil through inferno and "au-delà" instead of being guided.