"Up" -Margaret Atwood

I found myself in this poem quite easily, because the speaker expresses sentiments and asks questions that I have had to face myself. To me, this piece seemed to reflect Matthew Arnold’s idea that lyric can be a “dialogue of the mind with itself,” because throughout the entire poem, the speaker seems to be struggling to come to terms with her past so she can face the future. At the end of the poem, she asks if you were lying on your deathbed with one hour to live, “who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?” This question is left open-ended and if it is not exactly a revelation, it is at least a call for a revelation. The speaker doesn’t preach or propose an answer, but presents readers with the chance to evaluate themselves.