Margaret Atwood's You Begin

In Margaret Atwood’s poem You Begin, we are given the sense that she is trying to explain something to us. She describes to us seemingly random objects and how they are perceived as if trying to get across an important point. This is accomplished with a lot of repetition, within her poem she repetitively uses the phrase “this is” and then later “this is your hand.” By doing this it leaves the impression that she wanted us to look closely at the words she was saying and determine the significance or similarities. At the beginning of the poem it seems that the words can almost transition from one to another, from hand to eye both being body parts to the similarity of shape between the moon and a mouth to the color yellow; the color of the moon. Connecting words in this manner leads me to believe that Atwood’s intention through writing this poem is that everything can be connected in some manner no matter how different they may seem. This is supported in the second verse where she describes the rain in the summer and links it to the color green and from there all the way to all the trees in the background. Making connections isn’t the only thing Atwood seems to be trying to accomplish by writing this poem. She also appears to be describing to us how we all know basic words yet the world is far more complex, yet at the same time it relies on those basics. Atwood achieves this with a lot of the use of color. She describes in the second verse how the world contains nine colors, but then later implies that you have to sometimes “smudge” them in order to see the full picture; she uses the example of orange and red making the world burn. Atwood says at the beginning of the fourth verse “Once you have learned these words you will learn that there are more words than you can ever learn.” This supports that she believes that you must know basics before you can understand the full picture. Atwood breaks ideas down to their simplest form which is seen with her