Double Persephone is a self-published poetry collection written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood in 1961. Atwood handset the book herself with a flat bed press, designed the cover with linoblocks, and only made 220 copies. It was the first publication ever released by Atwood, and comprises seven poems: "Formal Garden", "Pastoral", "Iconic Landscape", "Persephone Departing", "Chthonic Love", "Her Song", "and "Double Persephone".
The opening poem of Double Persephone, "Formal Garden," a "girl with the gorgon touch" walks through the title location searching for "a living wrist and arm", but all she finds is a "a line of statues" with "marble flesh. The girl apparently has traits similar to Medusa, who could turn men to stone by glancing upon them.
Atwood followed up the collection with another book of poetry released in 1964, The Circle Game.
Famous quotes containing the word double:
“... the next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard?”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)