Standing Female Nude
• Title Poem of her first Collection of poetry:
Standing Female Nude
– 1985
Picasso
Standing
Female Nude
The Grand Nude; 1908
Gorges Braque 18921963
• Who has more power in this poem?
• What is Duffy saying about art?
What is Duffy saying about “ART”
other themes?
• Gender and class struggles
• Objectification of women
• Exploitation of women/artists and
commercialization of art.
• She is paid little, the artist’s work is later
sold and resold for millions of dollars.
Think about Power, Gender and
class struggles, the male gaze
• Line breaks emphasize ideas, contrasts
and juxtapositions.
• Why in the last stanza do we have two one
word lines? What do they represent or
support?
• Finished… enjambment: line continues
just as the work seems to never end.
Tone?
• Cynical tone of a prostitute who poses for
money.
• “The bourgeoisie will coo…
– Inequality of the classes
– She stands for 6 hours for a few francs
– Poem ends on the mention of francs also.
Francis Bacon painting breaks new
record
• Sold last year for record breaking price of
$142,405,000 sold in 6 minutes
Some thoughts on structure
• Duffy likes regular lined stanzas
• “I found that [Stealing] fell naturally (as
most of my poems do) into regular-lined
verses- in this case, 5 5-lined verses.
The verses are unrhymed and irregular
in meter. These free verses work for me
like small canvasses to hold the words
of the poem. They help to control the
rhythm of the poem… ”
Comments on commentary
Commentaries need to be a a paragraph, not a list of
observations. Work on this for the rest.
Must be specific
Some imagery is used to show ….
Which imagery?
Many of you are not stating how features are used:
Syntax is regular
– Why? How does fit poem?
\
Commentary
• Use formal third person
• No first person.
• Need to focus on literary devices and how
they contribute to the meaning of the
poem.
Commentary continued
• Commentaries should have a thesis:
• How does author +verb+ lit. feature+
verb+lit. effect + why.
• In the poem Mrs. Aesop, Carol Ann
Duffy uses a sarcastic tone and
humorous allusions to Aesop’s Fables
to show the wife’s discontent in her
marriage and to depict her husband as
an unoriginal bore.
• Don’t refer to persona in poem as
narrator. It is a speaker
• Avoid empty phrases: It seems to me, in
my opinion, interesting to note. They
don’t add to commentary. They only
take up space.
“I have no choice.” Different
interpretations here, but the artist might
mean 1. needs $. 2. must paint because
he loves it. It is what he does
Good comments
• The phrase “Belly nipple arse” lacks
punctuation which shows that she is
being looked at as an overall item, not
for her individual attributes.
• This enjambment creates a broken
rhythm to the poem that relates to the
poverty of the model.
Student Thesis
• Duffy uses a lack of punctuation, a
cynical tone, and enjambment to
illustrate the deception behind the ideals
of art; it is not a free, truthful medium,
but rather a business and industry in
which the subjects have little power to
define themselves.
Commentary on Poems
Comments on commentary
Commentaries need to be a a paragraph, not a list of
observations. Work on this for the rest.
Must be specific
Some imagery is used to show ….
Which imagery?
Many of you are not stating how features are used:
Syntax is regular
– Why? How does fit poem?
\
Commentary
• Use formal third person
• No first person.
• Need to focus on literary devices and how
they contribute to the meaning of the
poem.
Commentary continued
• Commentaries should have a thesis:
• How does author +verb+ lit. feature+
verb+lit. effect + why.
• In the poem Mrs. Aesop, Carol Ann
Duffy uses a sarcastic tone and
humorous allusions to Aesop’s Fables
to show the wife’s discontent in her
marriage and to depict her husband as
an unoriginal bore.
• Don’t refer to persona in poem as
narrator. It is a speaker
• Avoid empty phrases: It seems to me, in
my opinion, interesting to note. They
don’t add to commentary. They only
take up space.
“I have no choice.” Different
interpretations here, but the artist might
mean 1. needs $. 2. must paint because
he loves it. It is what he does
Good comments
• The phrase “Belly nipple arse” lacks
punctuation which shows that she is
being looked at as an overall item, not
for her individual attributes.
• This enjambment creates a broken
rhythm to the poem that relates to the
poverty of the model.
Student Thesis
• Duffy uses a lack of punctuation, a
cynical tone, and enjambment to
illustrate the deception behind the ideals
of art; it is not a free, truthful medium,
but rather a business and industry in
which the subjects have little power to
define themselves.