Love Poems

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I have been looking forward to reading Love Poems since I bought the collection four months ago, no doubt because of my high expectations from studying 'Hour' so intensely at secondary school. And mostly, it met my expectations. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Duffy is also the United Kingdom’s poet laureate, the first woman to be appointed the position in 400 years. She was seriously considered for the position in 1999. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration had wanted a poet laureate who exemplified the new “Cool Britannia,” not an establishment figure, and Duffy was certainly anything but establishment. She is the Scottish-born lesbian daughter of two Glasgow working-class radicals. Her female partner is also a poet and the two of them are raising a child together. Duffy has a strong following among young Britons, partially because her poetry collection Mean Timewas included in Britain’s A-level curriculum, but Blair was worried about how “middle England” would react to a lesbian poet laureate. There were also concerns in the administration about what Britain’s notorious tabloids would write about her sexuality, and about comments that Duffy had made urging an updated role for the poet laureate. In the end, Blair opted for the safe choice and named Andrew Motion to the post. Unlike the poems in Rapture, not all the poems in Love Poems are wholly autobiographical – some of them, as though at the Venice Carnival, are wearing a mask. The first poem, "Correspondents", is written in the voice of a respectable Victorian wife who is having an affair ("I read your dark words. and do to myself things / you can only imagine"). It appears alongside "Warming Her Pearls", a lesbian love poem in the voice of a lady's maid who fancies not the mistress's pearls but the mistress herself. I think what I was interested in at the time of writing these poems was in finding a language and imagery for the erotic and the hidden or secret. The pearls warmed by the pining servant's skin are, of course, a metaphor for her desire; but a poem is also like a pearl – a language-jewel provoked into existence by the grit of feeling or revelation.

The repetition of 'till love' at the opening of each stanza creates the idea that the narrator is beginning the poem over and over again, trying to get it right. The presence of references to previous love poetry indicates that the frustrated tone of the poem has developed from the narrator’s continued, yet failed, attempts to not mimic traditional love poems. Famous verses continuously sneak into their work, highlighting how the poet struggles to construct their own unique expression of love. Romantic imageryLittle Women, Big Boys (one-act), first produced in London, England, at Almeida Theatre, August 8, 1986. Beasts and Beauties: Eight Tales from Europe, first produced in Bristol, England, at the Bristol Old Vic,April 2004. Carol Ann Duffy is a British poet, playwright, and freelance writer. She is the first openly lesbian and first woman to be appointed as the United Kingdom's Poet Laureate, a position she held from 2009 to 2019. She is also the first openly gay person to be appointed to the position. She has published numerous collections of poetry, plays, and children's books, and has received numerous awards for her work, including the Costa Book Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize.We have compiled Carol Ann Duffy's poems for you. Carol Ann Duffy Poems The love poem has formed a considerable part of my own work, like that of any number of poets before me. My collection Rapture (Picador 2005) consisted of 52 poems which followed the course of a love affair from its beginnings to its end; but in 2010 Picador published Love Poems, a selection of more varied poems written by me between 1987 and 2011. Re-reading this selection for the purposes of the Guardian Book Club has been very much a case of emotion totally forgotten in tranquility. There is subtle, irregular rhyme throughout, perhaps to reflect the randomness of the emotion and how it can affect those who experience it. Each stanza begins with the subordinate clause and forms one complete sentence.

A signed limited edition of "Rings" by the artist Stephen Raw is available from [email protected] A comparison is drawn between famous love poems and 'modern love poems'. The narrator highlights how they don’t want their love poem to appear as a copy, deciding that they won’t state 'thou shalt feel love', as this has already been used by former great Poets. Stanza two The First Time" (1999) - This poem is about a soldier experiencing the horrors of war for the first time. The soldier reflects on the senselessness and brutality of war, as well as his own fear and vulnerability. People come to the work of Carol Ann Duffy via various routes. She rose to public prominence as Poet Laureate in 2009 (or, it could be argued, ten years earlier when she was apparently passed over in favour of ‘safer’ choice Andrew Motion). Her appointment made her the first female Laureate since the position was created in the seventeenth century – she reportedly only accepted the post for this reason – and also the first Scottish-born and openly gay poet in the role. The poem is written in Free Verse, with an irregular structure and Rhyme scheme. Its use of quotes from other famous love poems produces a collage-like effect. StructureCarol Ann Duffy's poems about war often focus on the human impact of war, rather than on political or strategic aspects. They also often reflect on the emotional and psychological effects of war, such as guilt, disconnection, and trauma. War Photographer Poem by Carol Ann Duffy I first encountered Duffy's work over a decade and a half ago as a petulant high school pupil, sat in a sweaty English Literature classroom heaving with savage adolescent machismo. Regretfully, I didn't resonate then, barely even listened - much preferring the derisive and crass verses of Larkin. Angelica Michelis and Anthony Rowland (eds), The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy: ‘choosing tough words’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003)

Throughout the poem we see the poet struggle to convey her feelings, underpinned by Duffy’s use of enjambment to create a free-flowing yet fragmented rhythm which stops and starts.This has often been interpreted as a slight, and evidence that Shakespeare did not love his wife. Others, however, have suggested that the will doesn’t mention all the other possessions the Bard probably left his wife because they would be dealt with separately, and that the ‘second best bed’ – far from being a snub – refers to the married couple’s own marital bed, with the best bed in the house being reserved for guests. Carol Ann Duffy follows this latter interpretation in ‘Anne Hathaway’, quoting the notorious line from Shakespeare’s will as the epigraph to her poem. Duffy cleverly uses the fourteen-line verse form to suggest the sonnet – and that poem’s close associations with Anne Hathaway’s husband – without actually giving us an out-and-out Shakespearean sonnet, or mere copy of her husband’s preferred poem.

One of the things that made this collection work so well (after the initial disappointment) was the constant edge of tension lurking beneath the works. There were some beautiful poems such as The Windows and Ann Hathaway, but The Windows held a note of bittersweet unattainability, and Ann Hathaway encapsulated grief and love almost tangibly. The tension is held throughout the collection with the continuous references to the 'darkening hour' and 'darkening sky' in a style reminiscent of William Blake, although temporarily defied with the revelation 'nothing dark will end our shining hour'... Duffy has been quoted as saying that she is ‘not interested, as a poet, in words like “plash” – Seamus Heaney words, interesting words. I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way’; and in the same Guardian profile, ‘Childhood is like a long greenhouse where everything is growing, it’s lush and steamy. It’s where poems come from’ (31 August, 2002). This book and some of the verses in it were meant for me, for this visit to England, for some of the feelings and thoughts I was going through. Now while that makes up just 5% of the anthology roughly, I am so glad I discovered this little book at all! And boy, am I glad I watched a random programme on the tele the other night! Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘The Love Poem’ is a poem about writing love poetry! It is in effect saying that finding the words is extraordinarily difficult, but the poets of the past have expressed what they have to say with such skill and beauty that they stand for modern generations. She has therefore created a literary ‘collage’ using famous verses through the ages to express the universality of love.For example, here, the poet has taken lines like “My mistress’ eyes” from Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 130′; “let me count the ways” from ‘ Sonnet 43’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; “come live with me”, from ‘ The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’ by Christopher Marlowe; “one hour with thee” from ‘An Hour with Thee’ by Walter Scott. Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet. In 1983 Duffy won the National Poetry Competition, and in 2009 she was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, becoming the first woman to receive the position since its creation in 1616. Her collection Standing Female Nude ( 1985) established her as a key figure in poetry. The poem begins with the photographer in his darkroom, developing photographs of the war. The photographer is described as "a dozen proofs; the light etched with knives," indicating that the images he has captured are deeply disturbing. The photographer is haunted by the faces of the people he has photographed, particularly the eyes of a wounded girl that seem to be "looking up from the scan." This is further indicated by the references to previous love poems which the reader may be familiar with. The presence of lines from these poems in Duffy’s own work suggests that they are, to an extent, immortal - as the words used to express the love of poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and William Shakespeare still have influence today. The presence of these works in a contemporary context highlights the immortal nature of the poet’s works. Nature Carol Annd Duffy’s poetry is known for its themes of love, loss, and the human condition, often drawing on personal experiences and observations. She has also been praised for her ability to make the personal universal, and for her use of imagery and metaphor. Carol Ann Duffy’s Poems About War