The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart Summary

The poem that I chose for my formal response is called The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart. It is written by Margaret Atwood, who is a famous writer. Her poem could be referred to as an "anti-love" poem. It talks about the heart and how the speaker believes that it is undependable and confused. At one point in the poem, the speaker says "but most hearts say, I want, I want, I want, I want. My heart is more duplicitous, though no twin as I once thought. It says, "I want, I don't want, I want." It explains how most peoples hearts want more and are not confused whereas, this heart is never quite sure of what it wants and is often confused. The speaker thinks of their heart as " a constant pestering" that never seems to leave them alone.
I noticed that there were many similes in the poem to help describe emotions and
objects. For example, the author wrote "this lump of muscle that contracts like a flayed biceps." The comparison helps you understand what the heart looks like from the perspective of the author. Another example of this would be "their four mouths gulping like fish". Hearts do not actually have four mouths, but she is using a simile to describe the veins surrounding our heart and how they resemble fish gulping for oxygen.

Another structure and feature that I found was rhyming.
It was not consistent and there was no pattern but there were parts of the poem. For example "Hearts are said to pound: this is to be expected, the heart's regular struggle against being drowned." The words pound and drowned rhyme together. A different example would be at the very end of the poem when it says "Heart, be still, and it will." The words still and will rhyme. I think that rhyming can make the poem more interesting. I find that rhyming can also make certain parts of the poem stand out and be more memorable to the reader.
I made a connection with the poem to the main character of an old film, his name is the Grinch. The movie starts off with him living alone on top of a mountain. He does not care for others, in fact, he hates everyone with a passion. He also does not trust anyone but himself. In his "theme song" the lyrics state that his heart is "an empty hole", "full of unwashed socks" and "a dead tomato splotched with mouldy purple spots". In both the poem and the movie they use the heart to explain how they are undependable, confused (in the poem), and closed
off.

I really enjoyed the poem and thought that it was very well written. I would suggest this poem to an older audience because it discusses some darker themes and can be a little depressing to read, it might also confuse younger audiences.