True Stories is a collection of poetry by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1981. The collection is dedicated to poet Carolyn Forché with whom Atwood had discussed her trip to El Salvador as a member of Amnesty International, and the poems both directly and indirectly discuss her views regarding human rights in third-world nations.
The poems of True Stories confront the nature of poetry, question whether they may be conventionally defined as poetry. They diverge from the themes established in her previous poetry; they explore themes of atrocity, of war and torture. Ultimately, they confront whether “poems come from such horrors?”.
Famous quotes containing the words true and/or stories:
“True, that true beauty virtue is indeed,
Whereof this beauty can be but a shade,
Which elements with mortal mixture breed.
True, that on earth we are but pilgrims made,
And should in soul up to our country move.
True, and yet true that I must Stella love.”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
“Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because—despite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content—these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)