You Are Happy


You Are Happy is a 1974 collection of poems by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood.

Contents

The book contains the following poems:

You Are Happy

  • Newsreel: man and firing squad
  • Useless
  • Memory
  • Chaos poem
  • Gothic letter on a hot night
  • November
  • Repent
  • Digging
  • How
  • Spring poem
  • Tricks with mirrors
  • You are happy

Songs of the transformed

  • Pig song
  • Bull song
  • Rat song
  • Crow song
  • Song of the worms
  • Owl song
  • Siren song
  • Song of the fox
  • Song of the hen's head
  • Corpse song

Circe/Mud Poems

• Composed of 24 unnamed poems

There is only one of everything

  • Eating fire
  • Four auguries
  • Head against white
  • There is only one of everything
  • Late August
  • Book of ancestors

Reception

A poetry review in The New York Times called "Songs of the transformed" "a splendid series of animal poems... to capture the natural world and yet to manage to make a larger statement.", and Manijeh Mannani of Athabasca University found that it "continue the same thread of feminist concerns with only the concluding poems of the collection reflecting the optimistic connotation inherent in the title."
You Are Happy has also been discussed by Poetry.