[Atwood is an acclaimed Canadian-born writer. In the following excerpt, she outlines Bissett's political vision as articulated in NOBODY OWNS TH EARTH.]

The amazing thing about [Nobody Owns th Earth] is that it juxtaposes visions of Edenic happiness and peace with angry political poems like "Th Canadian" and "Love of Life, th 49th Parallel," the latter being probably the most all-inclusive poem on American takeover to appear so far. And yet it isn't, finally, amazing: anger and the desire for change depend on the assumption that change will be for the better, that it is in fact possible to achieve not only individual but social freedom. The title, Nobody Owns th Earth, predicts a world that will be not "international" but post-national, in which people will live on the earth with love both for it and for each other, and some of the individual poems give us glimpses of this world. The angry "political" poems, however, recognize the fact that we do not yet live in this world, and if we assume too soon that the millennium has arrived we will simply end up as victims again, owned by people who do not even admit the possibility of a non-"owned" Earth. These Bissett identifies as "th Americans." A lot of the energy in the poems comes from the frustration experienced by someone who lives in the freedom of Position Four, communes with the mysticism of Position Five, but is forced to witness the effects of Position Two on himself and those around him. Like [English poet William] Blake, Bissett is a kind of social visionary, and for such a visionary there must always be Songs of Experience as well as Songs of Innocence. Paradise here and now is individual and sexual, Hell here and now is social and mechanical; but the potential for social redemption is present, as witness the strength of the image at the beginning of "Nobody Owns th Earth," in which "a whole peopul" is seen "moving / together."