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Contents
1. War Photographer
2. Valentine
3. Havisham
4. Originally
5. Anne Hathaway
6. Mrs Midas
War Photographer
In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which dont explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.
Something is happening. A strangers features
faintly start to twist before his eyes
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this mans wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.
A hundred agonies in black-and-white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sundays supplement. The readers eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.
Homework.
Stanza Two
1. How do the photographs now affect the photographer as he develops them?
2. What contrast does the poet create in this stanza?
3. What is the effect of the contrast?
to fields which dont explode beneath the feet/of running children in a
nightmare heat.
4.Why does the poet make reference to children here?
5. What tone is established and how is it established?
Stanza Three
half-formed ghost
1. This statement is ambiguous. Explain fully the different meanings.
He remembers the cries/ of this mans wife, how he sought approval/ without
words to do what someone must/ and how blood stained into foreign dust.
2. These lines draw attention to the internal conflict/dilemma experienced by a
war photographer. What is that conflict/dilemma?
3. What do these lines reveal about how the photographer now feels about
the image he has captured?
Stanza Four
A hundred agonies in black-and-white
1. This metaphor is ambiguous. Explain the different meanings.
from which his editor will pick out five or six/ for Sundays
supplement.
2. What do these lines reveal about the editors attitude to the images?
3. How and why does this vary from the photographers attitude?
The readers eyeballs prick/ with tears between the bath and pre-lunch
beers.
4. What do these words tell us about the readers response to the
photographs and therefore to conflicts in far away places?
from the aeroplane he stares impassively at where/ he earns his living and they
do not care.
1. What themes did you notice when reading and discussing the poem? Write these
down.
2. This poem asks a number of questions but does not answer them (which is the
duty of all good literature!) Can you identify any questions the poem raises?
3. Why do you think Duffy chose the character of the war photographer?
4. What is the main purpose of the poem?
5. In what way can Carol Ann Duffy herself be viewed as the real photographer?
Point
The poem begins in a
very private setting
Quotation
"In his darkroom.."
Importance
Place of peace and
tranquillity
Safe from the dangers
of the other half of his
work
Shows the extent of
unrest in the world
trouble is everywhere
"Belfast, Beirut,
Phnom Penh."
Children in England
play in fields whilst
those in warzones are
in constant danger;
children represent
innocence so
shocking
Emphasises the
troubles are
happening elsewhere.
Foreign that we will
forget the worlds
troubles because they
are not ours!
He remembers the
"foreign dust"
death of a man and the
picture he had taken
with the unspoken
permission of the
mans wife. Morally
questionable?
Imagery
Duffy creates some powerful and disturbing images in this poem. For
example:
'fields which don't explode beneath the feet of running children in a
nightmare heat.'
'how the blood stained into foreign dust.'
'a hundred agonies in black-and-white.'
Quotation
spools of suffering set
out in rows
Simile
Metaphor/Alliteration
solutions slop
Emotive Language
Imagery
Analysis
Valentine
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.
Homework.
Discussion Questions.
1. What are the things that are normally
associated with Valentines Day that Carol
Ann Duffy rejects? Why do you think that
she rejects them?
2. Instead of these things what object does Carol Ann Duffy choose to
represent love? What is surprising about this?
3. List all the words/phrases that seem out of place in a Valentine poem.
E.g. tears, grief. Why do you think they are included?
Analysis
The poet writes about her relationship as if it is an onion. We can say that she
uses a METAPHOR. She returns to the image over and over again, and
continually develops the comparison. We can refer to the language device
as an EXTENDED METAPHOR.
The Onion
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light.
Lethal
Its scent will cling to your fingers
Cling to your knife.
Havisham
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I havent wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard Ive dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.
uses many adjectives of colour - green, puce, white and red and
lists parts of the body eyes, hands, tongue, mouth, ear and
face.
Sometimes the meaning is clear, but other lines are more open - and there
are hints of violence in strangle, bite, bang and stabbed. It is not clear
what exactly Miss Havisham would like to do on her long slow honeymoon,
but we can be sure that it is not pleasant.
Homework.
Why does the poet omit Miss Havisham's title and refer to her by her
surname only?
How does the poet convey Miss Havishams conflicting emotions in line
1?
Why does the poet write spinster on its own? What does Miss
Havisham think about this word and its relevance to her?
What is the effect of Nooooo and b-b-breaks? Why are these words
written in this way?
Why does the character refer to her lover as a lost body and a male
corpse?
Why does the poet use the word b-b-b-breaks as the last word of the
poem?
How far does the poet want us to sympathise with Miss Havisham?
Does Miss Havisham have a fair view of men? What do you think of
her view of being an unmarried woman?
Perhaps the most important part of the poem is the question who did
this/to me? How far does the poem show that Miss Havisham is
responsible for her own misery, and how far does it support her
feelings of self-pity and her desire for revenge?
Analysis:
Content
Structure/Form
Language
Effect on Reader
Originally
We came from our own country in a red room
which fell through the fields, our mother singing
our fathers name to the turn of the wheels.
My brothers cried, one of them bawling Home,
Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,
the street, the house, the vacant rooms
where we didnt live any more. I stared
at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.
All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,
leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue
where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.
Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,
leading to unimagined, pebble-dashed estates, big boys
eating worms and shouting words you dont understand.
My parents anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
in my head. I want our own country, I said.
But then you forget, or dont recall, or change,
and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only
a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue
shedding its skin like a snake, my voice
in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think
I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space
and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?
strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.
Commentary
Memories play a significant role in the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, particularly
her recollections of childhood places and events. The poem "Originally,"
published in The Other Country (1990), draws specifically from memories of
Duffy's family's move from Scotland to England when she and her siblings
were very young. The first-born child, Duffy was just old enough to feel a deep
sense of personal loss and fear as she traveled farther and farther away from
the only place she had known as "home" and the family neared its alien
destination. This sentiment is captured in "Originally," in which it is described
in the rich detail and defining language of both the child who has had the
experience and the adult who recalls it.
As the title suggests, a major concern of the poem is beginningsone's roots,
birthplace, and homeland. Stanzas 1 and 2 centre on the pain of giving up, or
being forced to give up, the comfort of a familiar environment and of feeling
odd and out of place in a new one. In stanza 3, the final stanza, Duffy does an
about-face, describing what it feels like to accept fate, to resign oneself to
change and move on. The last line of the poem, however, presents an
intriguing conundrum: has the speaker really learned to forgo originality, or
has she not?
Theme: Identity Loss
"Originally" is a poem about a child fearful of losing her identity and the
struggle she goes through in an attempt to retain it. The title itself indicates
the significance of roots and of having definite origins, something the speaker
worries she has lost by being forced to leave her native country at such a
young age. The temperament within the family as a whole seems harmonious
enough: The mother sings the father's name "to the turn of the wheels," and
there is no mention of quarreling among the children. Instead, it is the idea of
place, not people, that stirs feelings of apprehension and uncertainty. The
boys cry because they know they have lost their familiar environment forever,
and one of them leaves no room for doubting the source of his pain as he
bawls, "Home, / Home."
All childhood is an emigration. Soon only a splinter, a skelf of the old culture
remains. But the poem reaches beyond its own experience, acknowledging
that whether we move or not, childhood involves leaving and loss, shedding of
skins. The parents anxiety is highlighted in the simile like a loose tooth, and
the snake imagery.
Notice how Duffy doesnt just use end rhyme. Rhymes crop up in more
unusual and unexpected places, suggesting, perhaps, continuity underneath
change. In the last stanza, for instance, a series of assonantal, alliterative and
full rhymes links key words together.
Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.
Duffy further develops this notion by using the language of poetry to describe
the lovemaking between Anne and Shakespeare. Sex and poetry are
interwoven as his touch becomes a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Anne imagines she is a product of her husbands imagination, written into
existence through their passionate exchanges, whilst the second best bed
functions as a page beneath his writers hands. She is his ultimate muse, not
just inspiring him to produce great works but actually becoming them. Rather
than living in an atmosphere of hostility, the couple lives in a world of
romance and drama, brought into being through their physical and emotional
love for each other.
It was customary in Shakespeares time to give up the best bed in the house
for guests. Anne imagines the guests in the next room, dribbling their prose,
whilst herself and her husband create poetry and drama. Anne and
Shakespeare inhabit a world full of senses, played by touch, by scent, by
taste, whilst all the guests are able to do is dribble. The poem concludes with
Anne claiming that all her memories of her husband are stored in the casket
of my widows head. He is preserved not in a coffin or urn, not even in his
writing, but in the thoughts inside Annes head, implying that the real William
Shakespeare was a man that only his wife could ever truly know.
Poetic Devices
The poem is written in the form of a sonnet. Shakespeares most famous
poems about love were written in this form, and Duffys choice here suggests
that this poem is both a homage to Shakespeares romantic sonnet and at the
same time a re-examining of the poet and playwright from a different angle.
Whilst she keeps the rough outline of the sonnet, Duffy does not use the
traditional rhyme scheme that all Shakespearian sonnets follow; ABAB CDCD
EFEF GG. She keeps the rhyming couplet at the end, but otherwise her lines
are only loosely joined together through assonance, for example world and
words.
The lines are softly and subtly joined together, as if to echo the physical
relationship between Anne and Shakespeare.
Duffys choice to subvert the form of the sonnet emphasises that these are the
words of his wife and represent her own insight into her husband, an insight
that cannot be shared or replicated by anyone else.
The poem is rich in metaphors, such as the spinning world of the bed or the
lovers words as shooting stars. The metaphors allow the world of
Themes
This is a poem about love and one that could usefully be compared to
Shakespeares own sonnets on the topic, in particular Sonnet 130, where he
compares his mistress to the standards normally required of women in poetry,
and concludes that even though she is not the divine goddess other poets
write about, to him she is just as beautiful in spite of, or maybe even because
of, her human imperfections.
Anne Hathaway is about a marriage where the couple creates their own
romance, one that does not involve conforming to other peoples
expectations.
The poem allows the reader an insight into a relationship of mutual love and
respect, where the couple creates a retreat from the rest of the world through
poetry, a world which is symbolised by the second best bed.
The power of literature and the imagination is hence a central idea in the
poem.
The poem creates significance around the bed which can only be truly
understood by the couple themselves.
The poem is hence in one sense about reinventing material objects.
Another theme that runs through the poem is Annes loss of her husband and
her genuine grief. A reader might perhaps expect Anne Hathaway to be angry
and resentful, permanently overshadowed and side-lined by her husband, but
Duffys Anne is only full of admiration and love for her husband, cherishing her
precious memories that nobody else can share. Although Duffy gives Anne a
voice, she actually subverts the readers expectations through the emotions
expressed by the character. This is in contrast to another poem by Carol Ann
Duffy, Havisham, where Miss Havisham from Great Expectations remains
bitter and vengeful towards the lover who jilted her. There is no such anger or
resentment in this poem, only a widow grieving a beloved husband.
Anne Hathaway allows us a different perspective of Shakespeare, a man
sometimes represented as a philandering husband who put his writing above
all else. We instead perceive him as a devoted husband, who saw writing not
as something separate to marriage, but as something deeply embedded
within it.
Another key theme in the poem is the true identity of William Shakespeare, a
man about whom scholars still know surprisingly little. By presenting this
poem in the voice of Anne Hathaway, Duffy wants us to appreciate that Anne
was a central part of his life, as well as a passionate, creative and articulate
woman in her own right.
Mrs Midas
It was late September. I'd just poured a glass of wine, begun
to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen
filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath
gently blanching the windows. So I opened one,
then with my fingers wiped the other's glass like a brow.
He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.
Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way
the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky,
but that twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked
a pear from a branch - we grew Fondante d'Automne and it sat in his palm like a light bulb. On.
I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights in the tree?
He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed.
He drew the blinds. You know the mind; I thought of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.
He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne.
The look on his face was strange, wild, vain. I said,
What in the name of God is going on? He started to laugh.
I served up the meal. For starters, corn on the cob.
Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.
He toyed with his spoon, then mine, then with the knives, the
forks.
He asked where was the wine. I poured with shaking hand,
a fragrent, bone-dry white from Italy, then watched
as he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank.
It was then that I started to scream. He sank to his knees.
After we had both calmed down, I finished the wine
on my own, hearing him out. I made him sit
on the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself.
I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone.
The toilet I didn't mind. I couldn't believe my ears:
how he'd had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted.
But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold?
It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes
no thirst. He tried to light a cigarette; I gazed, entranced,
as the blue flame played on its luteous stem. At least,
I said, you'll be able to give up smoking for good.