Duffy Poetry

[ryanwalker]

Mr Waddell. What poems link with other poems? I ask as I cant find my notes on it and I really don't know.

[awaddell]

I'll go over this on Friday Ryan.

[awaddell]

Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway (1556-1623) was a real woman - famous for being the wife of William Shakespeare. We do know some things about her - she was nine years older than her husband, but outlived him by seven years. They married in 1582, when Anne was already pregnant, and had three children together. Although Shakespeare spent many years working in London, he made frequent visits to their home in Stratford-upon-Avon.
In the poem Anne sees her relationship with Shakespeare in terms of his own writing. She uses the sonnet form (though she does not follow all the conventions of rhyme or metre – 12 lines do not follow a strict rhyme scheme) which Shakespeare favoured. She suggests that as lovers they were as inventive as Shakespeare was in his dramatic poetry - and their bed might contain “forests, castles, torchlight”, “clifftops” and “seas where he would dive for pearls”. These images are very obviously erotic, and Ms. Duffy no doubt expects the reader to interpret them in a sexual sense. Where Shakespeare's words were” shooting stars” (blazing in glory across the sky) for her there was the more down-to-earth consequence of “kisses/on these lips”.
She also finds in the dramatist's technique of “rhyme...echo...assonance” a metaphor for his physical contact - a “verb” (action) which danced in the centre of her “noun” (body). Though the best bed was reserved for the guests, they only dribbled “prose” (inferior pleasure) while she and her lover, on the second best bed enjoyed the best of “Romance/and drama”. The language here has obvious connotations of sexual intercourse - we can guess what his verb and her noun are and what the one is doing in the other, while the guests' “dribbling” suggests a less successful erotic encounter.
The poem relies on double meanings very like those we find in Shakespeare's own work. It gives a voice to someone of whom history has recorded little. The language is may be too modern to be spoken by the historical Anne Hathaway but the nature of content is perhaps more apt.

1. What does this poem say about the nature of imagination?
2. Explain, in your own words, how the central image of the “second best bed” works in the poem.
3. How well does the poet adapt the sonnet form here?
4. In what ways does this poem appeal to the senses?
5. Is this poem more about Anne or her husband, or is it about them both, as a couple?

[awaddell]

ORIGINALLY by Carol Ann Duffy

In this autobiographical poem, Duffy considers and explores the sense of isolation and confusion she felt as a child when her family moved from the Gorbals in Glasgow to England.

She describes both the literal details of the journey and the move as well as the deeper, metaphorical journey that she and her family experienced as a result of this decision.

As the title suggests, she considers to what extent our identity is shaped and defined not only by our environment but by changes in dialect and culture. The initial catalyst for the poem, the memories of the move and her gradual assimilation into her new home, provokes a bigger, more philosophical meditation on the subject of childhood itself.

Perhaps the most significant line in the poem comes at the start of stanza two when she asserts that ‘All childhood is an emigration’, revealing clearly the universal truth that the process of growing up is always synonymous with change.

Like much of Duffy’s work, the poem has a regular structure and the three stanzas of eight lines help to divide the poem into a straightforward chronology. Stanza one recalls the journey from Glasgow towards her new home, Stanza two explores her initial sense of not fitting in to this new landscape. In the third stanza she considers the larger question about how our sense of identity is formed, shaped and affected by such transitions.

However, underneath this apparently ordered structure, the poet’s anxiety and uncertainty is revealed through the lack of a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme which reinforces the lack of order in her own life at this time.
The fact that the poem is mainly composed of a series of fragmented memories, occasionally using deliberately childish words or phrases, is reminiscent of the way most of us recall our own childhood and adds to the authenticity of the poem.

Originally
In the first stanza, Duffy emphasises that this decision affected her entire family unit through the first person plural in the opening line: We came from our own country. Similarly, the deliberate assonance of “our own” reinforces her definite sense of belonging to and possession of a particular place.

“Red room” could be a metaphor for a car or the description of the interior of a train.
The colour red has connotations of passion or anger, perhaps reflecting her own feelings about being forced to leave the city of her birth and early childhood. At the same time, the word choice and alliteration of fell and fields emphasises her feelings of impotence and lack of control in the making of this important decision.

She recalls hearing our mother singing/our father’s name to the turn of the wheels. The optimistic mood of her mother acts as a distinct contrast to the obvious negativity of Duffy herself and is also slightly ambiguous - the reader is unsure whether their father is in the train carriage with them or if they are travelling to meet him at their destination.

She also remembers the behaviour of her younger brothers whose emotions seem to reflect her own: they are crying and one of them is bawling Home, Home. The repetition and capitalisation of the word home reinforces the misery and overwhelming sense of loss and separation that she associates with this time.

Duffy uses personification in the line the miles rushed back to the city to emphasise her own desire to return to Glasgow, to reverse this trip and reinhabit the street, the house, the vacant rooms/where we didn’t live any more.

Again, the first person plural of we emphasises that, even though this poem is written from her own perspective, she very clearly considers the impact of the move not just on her but on the rest of her family. In contrast to her younger siblings, whose protestations are loud and vocal, Duffy is silent as she stared/ at the eyes of a blind toy.

The word choice of blind again exposes her uncertainty and anxiety as they head towards something unknown and unfamiliar.

Stanza two
This stanza opens with perhaps the most memorable words in the poem in her assertion that All childhood is an emigration. This metaphor reveals one of the key ideas explored by Duffy in this work as she considers the wider, more generic experience of childhood itself which, by definition, is equated with changes and transitions that are often beyond our control.

In the remainder of the stanza, the elongated, drawn out phrasing of the first three lines emphasises the slow stages of childhood and provides a contrast with the short, abrupt sentences that follow in the lines Others are sudden./ Your accent wrong.

Having the 'wrong' accent conveys how communication and acceptance is much more complex than merely speaking the same language. Her sense of confusion and not belonging is again reinforced as she recalls Corners, which seem familiar leading to unimagined, pebble-dashed estates.

The word choice of seem and unimagined exposes her inability to negotiate her way successfully through this new, strange and unfamiliar landscape. Similarly, her recollection of big boys/eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand underpins her sense of confusion as she is confronted by behaviour and language that is alien to her.

In the last two lines of this stanza, the initial optimism of her mother in the first stanza has been replaced with an anxiety that stirred like a loose tooth.
This is an interesting simile since, while it emphasises that her parents too are struggling with aspects of the move, their fears are not enough to provoke a strong reaction– a loose tooth can easily fall out of its own accord or be quickly extracted.

The italicisation of the final line of this stanza I want my own country reminds us again of the autobiographical nature of the poem and is a reference back to the first line of stanza one.

It acts almost as a childish lament, perhaps one that was constantly repeated during this upsetting transition and reminds us, like the words big boys used earlier, how young Duffy was.

Stanza three
The final stanza opens with the conjunctive ‘Bu’t to indicate a change in the writer’s line of thought as she meditates on the inevitability of change and adaptation. She uses the second person you forget, or don’t recall to directly expose the often fragile nature of childhood memory.

The speaker in this stanza is older and more reflective as she considers her own gradual transition. Recalling seeing her brother swallow a slug refers back to the boys eating worms in the second stanza and implies that this act is evidence that he has fully assimilated into his new home, with the simple alliteration indicating that this was a straightforward process for him.

However, the deliberate employment of the Scottish dialect in the phrase a skelf of shame reveals that she still feels attached to her Scottish roots and is unwilling to fully relinquish the last traces of her Scottish dialect.

While her brothers have successfully adapted, she still feels out of place and like a splinter, memories of her former life continue to trouble her. While she remembers eventually her tongue shedding its skin like a snake and her voice in the classroom sounding just like the rest there is a definite implication that, despite these outward signs she has adapted, she continues to feel out of place.

As the poet moves towards her conclusion, she asks the first of three questions: Do I only think/ I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space/and the right place? It is this question that the poet has been attempting to answer throughout the entire poem and yet still by the end she is nowhere nearer to a resolution.
In asking this, she challenges both herself and us to consider our own notions of self and identity. The deliberate inversion of I only again emphasises her feelings of isolation and separateness from the other members of her family during this period

By the end of the poem it is clear that the poet is no closer to defining her identity. When asked the question Where do you come from? she still has to qualify and clarify this simple query with the response Originally? This momentary hesitation reveals that even though she is older, the speaker continues to have mixed feeling about her true origins.


Themes
In this poem, Duffy reveals the importance of early childhood memories and experiences in shaping identity and also considers the impact of significant domestic changes during the formative years. It is clear that even though Duffy was only six when she moved to England, her sense of Scottishness has stayed with her.

However, this affinity has resulted in a sense of confusion about her own identity and where she belongs and the poem is her own attempt to define more precisely where her true origins lie. Although asserting that all childhoods involve change and transition, she feels a distinct pull towards this country that she left so young and there is a definite feeling of loss running through the poem. In recalling how easily her brothers were able to adapt she emphasises her own sense of separateness.


Adapted from BBC Bitesize

[awaddell]

War Photographer – Additional Notes

1

The poet makes use of word choice, imagery and structure to initially create the mood and then to show the various things the photographer reflects on: the horrific things he has seen, how his home life compares to his working environment and how he feels about his job.
At the start of the poem, the photographer is in his dark room where the poet creates a sombre reflective mood. In stanza one the photographer is “In his darkroom… finally alone”. This could have the meaning of self isolation because he is in a room by himself and not wanting to be disturbed. The word choice of ‘finally’ here suggests the poet feels some relief to be alone in his darkroom. It could also be argued that the ‘darkroom’ could be a metaphor for his head, his mind and the dark thoughts therein.
The mood is one of sadness during the development of these photographs because they are mostly gruesome scenes that he has taken while spending time over there. In fact the undeveloped spools are referred to as “spools of suffering.” These spools are filled with images of immense pain and the photographer sets them out in “ordered rows.” This could symbolise the mass graves of dead people he has seen in warzones but could also show an attempt by him to create order from chaos. This effectively creates a sombre and reflective mood and helps the reader appreciate the difficulty of the man’s job where he longs to get away from the warzone and spend some time in safety, alone and consequently ends up isolated from others.

The photographer begins in the second stanza to reflect on the horrific things he has witnessed in the warzone – this continues the serious and sombre mood of the poem. The photographer thinks back to the warzone and contrasts it with “rural England” where there are “fields which don’t explode beneath the feet/of running children in a nightmare heat.” This phrase and specifically the word choice of ‘don’t’indicates a place where these scenarios do occur. Where people are seriously threatened by explosions and are continuously faced with the dangerous situations and exposed to regular violence.






2

This poem is about a person who is clearly not the poet. The surface subject of the poem is the war photographer of the title but at a deeper level the poem explores the difference between "Rural England" and places where wars are fought (Northern Ireland, the Lebanon and Cambodia); between the comfort or indifference of the newspaper editor and its readers, and the suffering of the people in the photographs.

‘War Photographer’ (from Standing Female Nude, 1985) comes from Duffy's friendship with Don McCullin and Philip Jones Griffiths, two very well-respected stills photographers who specialised in war photography. But the photographer in the poem is anonymous: he could be any of those who record scenes of war. He is not so much a particular individual as, like the poet, an observer and recorder of others' lives. He is an outsider ("alone/With spools of suffering") who moves between two worlds but is comfortable in neither. The "ordered rows" of film spools may suggest how the photographer tries to bring order to what he records, to interpret or make sense of it.

The simile which compares him to a priest shows how seriously he takes his job, and how (by photographing them) he stands up for those who cannot help themselves. His darkroom resembles a church in which his red light is like a coloured lantern (quite common in Catholic and some Anglican churches). The image is also appropriate because, like a priest, he teaches how fragile we are and how short life is. ("All flesh is grass" is a quotation from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Isaiah contrasts the shortness of human life with eternal religious truths - "the Word of the Lord" which "abides forever"). In the poem, the sentence follows a list of names. These are places where life is even briefer than normal, because of wars.

More @ mradamhigherenglish.wordpress.com/tag/critical-essay/

and

predoc.org/docs/index-214662.html

[awaddell]

Test yourself:

www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/poetduffy/

[awaddell]

Carol Ann Duffy talking about, and reading, Mrs Midas:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVOiBNtupWs

[awaddell]

Valentine

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubrBSP8qrXo

[Niamh Canning]

Hi Mr Waddell
For Mrs Midas what are the best quotes? I have the beginning and ending but don't know what two other quotes to use.

[Liah]

Me Waddell what poems link to others? And how long do you think we should spend on the essay and poems in the exam?

[Liah]

Meant Mr, hahah

[awaddell]

Niamh,

In addition to the opening and closing lines, I'd go for two lines that deal with a varoety of techniques and ideas. How about:

"He asked where was the wine. I poured with shaking hand,"
- Her fear, realisation that he has become obsessed (relates to King Midas Myth)
- Caesura. Short sentence to emulate stunted speech and movements in order to convey apprehension and growing fear.

"And who, when it comes to the crunch, can live/with a heart of gold?"
- Rhetorical question, makes the reader think about the situation and helps the reader relate to Mrs Midas' loss (loss of love, her life and her husband)
- "Heart of gold" is a common metaphor but in this case it is literal so it acts as pun (play on words)
- Gold relates to myth, symbolises wealth and greed but it is also a metal, dead, inhuman and in relation to real value (love) it is worthless to her.

- - - - -

Liah,

All the poems relate to one another in some sense. Learn 4 lines from each poem, as taught. Select the opening and closing lines and two others that contain a variety of techniques and say something about a main idea or the speaker.

The links may inclue:
1. An effective opening/ending to poems
2. Clear personality of character/speaker
3. Aspect of love or another theme/human emotion, e.g. greed or loss
4. Particular poetic form, e.g. Rhyme, Dramatic Monologue, etc
5. Effective use of poetic devices/ literary techniques (same thing, different wording).


I'm free periods 2 and 6 today (Monday) and periods 4 and 6 tomorrow (if I don't get taken for cover) if anyone wants me to explain something or even use my room for revision.

Best of luck,
Mr W

[Jonathans]

Mr Waddell, in the last line of war photographer could I say that 'they' is open to interpretation as it could be society,soldiers,the newspaper, the readers or is it specifically someone who doesn't care?

[awaddell]

Hi Jonathan,

It's mainly the readers as the previous lines were about them, however the hypocrisy and lack of true empathy that angers the Duffy and the photographer relates to us all.

Well done, good work.

[awaddell]

Hi Jonathan,

It's mainly the readers as the previous lines were about them, however the hypocrisy and lack of true empathy that angers the Duffy and the photographer relates to us all.

Well done, good work.