This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

Atwood divides her poem, “Variations on the Word Love,” into two concrete sections, which in turn represent two different ways of looking at the word love. The first stanza is dedicated to expressing love as a word and the second focuses on love as a feeling. Readers notice a drastic change in Atwood’s tone between the two stanzas because in the first stanza, her attitude about love is expressed quite bitterly. This bitterness is evident in her description of love as “a word we use to plug/ holes with.” This description makes the word “love” seem insignificant, expressing how casual the word has become. Within the same stanza, she expresses the idea that love has become too commercialized, such as with heart-shaped Valentines Day cards that “look nothing/ like real hearts. Add lace/ and you can sell/ it.” In these lines, Atwood expresses that love has lost all of its meaning because it has been misrepresented and exploited.

Although Atwood’s attitude towards love appears bitter in the first stanza, her bitterness vanishes at the start of the second stanza when she says, “Then there’s the two/ of us. This word/ is far too short for us, it has only/ four letters.” Upon reading this line, it becomes evident that Atwood’s bitterness is not towards love itself, but towards the misleading image associated with it. Atwood describes love as a “single/ vowel in this metallic/ silence,” which expresses that a one syllable, four-letter word is not sufficient to accurately represent such a strong emotion. She feels very strongly that the word “love” is “not enough but it will/ have to do” and finishes the poem with a literal cliff-hanger ending, dangling the readers on the edge of possibility when she expresses it as, “a finger-/ grip on a cliffside. You can/ hold on or let go.” This illustrates that love is a very subjective feeling, which has different effects on different individuals, who can, in turn, make various different decisions on the subject as well.

Nowadays, the connectation of love has been extended. Just like the poem mentioned: for those red heartshaped vacancies on the page that look nothing like real hearts, and add lace and you can sell it. I n my mind, love is so precious that it is impossible for us to judge by money. I really hope that all of us shall value love and cherish love.