Margret Atwood is most noted for her novels and the many awards, including a Booker Award, that they have won. Yet Atwood began her writing career as a poet in the 1960s with her first poetry collection Double Persephone published in 1961. After a decade of not publishing new poems, Atwood produced The Door in 2007. It is generally critically agreed, as Jay Parini of the UK’s The Guardian confirms, that this collection (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (November 7, 2007)) is an excellent addition to Atwood’s corpus of acclaimed and popular work. The collection covers three categories of topic. The one topic addresses social commentary about dark corners in people's lives that drive them to asking lacerating question and associate with dark deeds. Included in this are the issues of war and torture and dark, hurting poets. A second topic addresses personal revelations about her life as she had her 68th birthday in 2007. She reminisces about her mother and father and other childhood and youthful memories. Critical opinion suggests that these might be her weakest poems, though "weak" doesn't equate with "failed." The third topic is that of approaching death. The final poem of the collection, and the one from which the title derives, is critically acclaimed as a splendid examination of Atwood's perception of and feelings toward the approach of death:

You confide yourself to the darkness.
You step in.
The door swings closed.