Poetry
By Carol Ann Duffy
National 5 Scottish Text
Kirkcaldy High School
English Department
Contents
1. War Photographer
2. Valentine
3. Havisham
4. Originally
5. Anne Hathaway
6. Mrs Midas
Information on the Poet
Critically acclaimed as well as popular with readers, Carol Ann Duffy is a
playwright, children’s writer and poet whose many best selling collections of
poems include, Mean Time, The World’s Wife and most recently Rapture.
One of the best known and most celebrated of living poets, Duffy was
appointed Poet Laureate in 2009, the first female poet to hold the position.
As well as being Poet Laureate, Duffy is currently the Director of the Writing
School at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Written in a demotic style, using as she says “simple words in a complicated
way”, Duffy’s poems often explore political, philosophical and social issues,
especially issues centring on gender, identity and inequality. Though her
range of cultural references is wide, she is often drawn to religious language
and to the world of fairy tales.
Duffy is also particularly known for her exploration of feminine archetypes, the
subversion of gender stereotypes and her dramatic monologues. These
monologues are often written in the voices of characters marginalised or
demonised by mainstream society.
A lapsed Catholic for whom poetry is very close to prayer, in each of her
poems Duffy is “trying to reveal a truth”.
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 don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.
Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s 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 Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s 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.
The content and ideas of the poem.
Discuss:
What is happening in the poem?
Where is it set?
Homework.

Write a paragraph in your jotter explaining what the poem is about.
The Setting of the poem
How would you prove the following points by referring to the text?
1. The man has been to many trouble spots of the world
2. The man is now working in a familiar part of the world which is peaceful by
comparison to the places mentioned above.
3. There is a stark contrast between his home in England, and the places
where he works.
4. He remembers the death of a man and the picture he had taken with the
unspoken permission of the man’s wife.
Analysis
Stanza One
“spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.”
1. To what is the poet referring here?
2. Whose “suffering” is contained in the spools?
3. Why might the photographer be trying to order his pictures?
4. “ordered rows” – what else could this phrase be alluding to?
5. “The only light is red” The poet makes effective use of colour throughout
the poem. Why is the colour red significant here? Explain fully.
6. “as though this were a church and he/ a priest preparing to intone a Mass.”
What technique is used in these lines?
7. Why is this image effective? What does it tell us about the photographer’s
attitude to developing the photographs?
8. “Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass”
What do you notice about the sentence structure of this line?
9. Why has the poet made reference to these places?
10. Where is the final sentence “All flesh is grass” taken from? What does it
mean? Why has it been included in the poem?
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 don’t 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 man’s 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 Sunday’s
supplement.”
2. What do these lines reveal about the editor’s attitude to the images?
3. How and why does this vary from the photographer’s attitude?
“The reader’s eyeballs prick/ with tears between the bath and pre-lunch
beers.”
4. What do these words tell us about the reader’s 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.”
5. Who is the “they”?
6. What do these final lines say about ‘our’ attitude to conflict in other countries?
7. What tone is established?
Poetic Form
1. What do you notice about the length of each stanza?
2. What about the rhyme scheme? Does it vary or remain constant?
3. What could the poetic form represent in terms of what the photographer is trying
to do to his photographs and the effect of his attempts?
Evaluation – Group Task
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
The man has been to
many trouble spots of
the world
"Belfast, Beirut,
Phnom Penh."
The man is now
working in a familiar
part of the world
which is peaceful by
comparison to the
places mentioned
above.
Again, emphasises
safety and peaceful
life at home, shocking
image, contrast with
the violence abroad.
"Rural England. Home
again."
Gives the impression
of idyllic setting; stark
contrast to the
warzones
"fields which don't
explode beneath the
feet..."
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 world’s
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
man’s 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.'
The techniques used by the poet
Technique
Alliteration/Metaphor
Quotation
spools of suffering set
out in rows
Simile
as though this were a
church and he a priest
Metaphor/Alliteration
solutions slop
Emotive Language
fields which don't
explode beneath the
feet of running
children
Imagery
blood stained into
foreign dust
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.
Background to the Poem
The poem on the surface is about the giving of an unusual present for
Valentine’s Day but it is really an exploration of love and the nature of
relationships between two people. The poem is universal; it could be any lover
to any beloved as there is no indication of the sex of either the “I” or the “you”.
This is a good poem to write about because it has a single central image
which is developed throughout the poem. The onion is an extended metaphor
for love.
How does Duffy use structure?
The structure of a poem is the way in which the poet chooses to set the poem
out. This includes rhyme schemes, rhythm patterns, word or sentence
patterns and the way the lines are laid out.
Duffy wants the receiver of her onion to know that she has chosen it because
she feels that it is the best and the most genuine declaration of her love. Duffy
rejects the traditional symbols of love because she feels that they have
become meaningless. The “satin hearts”, “red roses” cute cards etc are not
acceptable to Duffy because each has ceased to be original; they are
stereotypical gifts which have been sent so many times that they have
become superficial and insignificant.
Notice how Duffy structures these lines to emphasise that she does not
approve of these types of gifts: ‘Not a red rose or satin heart.” & “Not a cute
card or a kissogram”. In both cases the word ‘not’ is stressed because it
appears first in the line and it is the very first word of the poem. Duffy adds
impact to her point by repeating the structure of the lines and by having the
lines standing alone.
Also, Duffy is making a very personal and direct declaration of love. The
message is sent from the speaker to the intended lover through her use of ‘I’
and ‘You’. Duffy uses short lines to emphasise the emotional plea.
The whole poem is written in free verse. This is an important choice because
it echoes the natural flow of speech and highlights that love and relationships
have no order of patterns.
The poet seems to reject any overly sentimental and materialistic ideas about
love. Instead she tries to present us with a more ‘truthful’ and realistic picture
of what love really is and what being in love truly means.
Homework.

Write a paragraph in your jotter explaining what the poem is about.
Discussion Questions.
1. What are the things that are normally
associated with Valentine’s 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?
4. Does the poem fulfil our expectation of a poem entitled ‘Valentine’?
Why?
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.’
‘It will blind you with tears
Like a lover.’
‘It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.’
‘Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful.’
‘Its platinum loops shrink to a
wedding-ring
if you like.’
‘Lethal
Its scent will cling to your fingers
Cling to your knife.’
The ‘brown paper’ is the outer skin of the
onion, the comparison also supports the ideas
of a gift. The reference to the ‘moon’ is
common in romantic poetry, it ‘promises light’
like the moon, and perhaps, like the optimism
at the beginning of a new relationship.
Havisham
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.
Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days
in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this
to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.
Some nights better, the lost body over me,
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till I suddenly bite awake. Love’s
hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding-cake.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.
Background and Commentary
This poem is a monologue spoken by Miss Havisham, a character in Dickens'
Great Expectations. Jilted by her scheming fiancé, she continues to wear her
wedding dress and sit amid the remains of her wedding breakfast for the rest
of her life, while she plots revenge on all men. She hates her spinster state of which her unmarried family name constantly reminds her (which may
explain the choice of title for the poem).
She begins by telling the reader the cause of her troubles - her phrase
“beloved sweetheart bastard” is a contradiction in terms (called an oxymoron).
She tells us that she has prayed so hard (with eyes closed and hands pressed
together) that her eyes have shrunk hard and her hands have sinews strong
enough to strangle with - which fits her murderous wish for revenge. (Readers
who know Dickens' novel well might think at this point about Miss Havisham's
ward, Estella - her natural mother, Molly, has strangled a rival, and has
unusually strong hands.)
Miss Havisham is aware of her own stink - because she does not ever change
her clothes or wash. She stays in bed and screams in denial. At other times
she looks and asks herself “who did this” to her. She sometimes dreams
almost tenderly or erotically of her lost lover, but when she wakes the hatred
and anger return. Thinking of how she “stabbed at the wedding cake” she now
wants to work out her revenge on a “male corpse” - presumably that of her
lover.
The poem is written in four stanzas which are unrhymed. Many of the lines
run on, and the effect is like normal speech. The poet


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.

Write a paragraph in your jotter explaining what the poem is about.
Havisham: Discussion Questions

Why does the poet omit Miss Havisham's title and refer to her by her
surname only?

How does the poet convey Miss Havisham’s conflicting emotions in line
1?

What feelings are conveyed by the metaphor “dark green pebbles” in
stanza 1?

Why does the poet write “spinster” on its own? What does Miss
Havisham think about this word and its relevance to her?

How is a sense of decay created in stanza 2?

What is the effect of “Nooooo” and “b-b-breaks”? Why are these words
written in this way?

What is the effect of the lack of punctuation in line 12?

What is the meaning of the image of “a red balloon bursting”?

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 the reader have to know about Great Expectations to understand
the poem?

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
Who is speaking? To whom?
Structure/Form
Language
Themes / Attitudes / Ideas (in addition to content)
Effect on Reader
Similarities / Links to Other Texts
Additional Information / References / Websites
Originally
We came from our own country in a red room
which fell through the fields, our mother singing
our father’s 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 didn’t 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 don’t understand.
My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
in my head. I want our own country, I said.
But then you forget, or don’t 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 beginnings—one'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 doesn’t 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.
Background to the Poem
This poem is taken from a collection by Carol Ann Duffy called “The World’s
Wife”. In this collection, Duffy writes a number of dramatic monologues from
the perspective of women who have been traditionally silenced in history,
mythology and fiction. A dramatic monologue is a poem that is spoken by a
character.
Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare. She was nine years
older than her husband, who married her when she was pregnant with their
first child. They spent long periods of time apart; he went to London to work in
the theatres whilst she stayed behind in Stratford upon Avon. When
Shakespeare died, the only present he left his wife in his will was the second
best bed in the house. Many scholars have seen this as confirmation that the
couple had become estranged, and that this parting gift was meant to be a
snub on Shakespeare’s part.
There has been much speculation about the great loves and muses in
Shakespeare’s life but very few people think that Anne Hathaway was one of
them. In the film Shakespeare in Love Anne Hathaway, whom we never see,
is nothing more than an inconvenience to her husband, getting in the way of
his search for a true muse who will inspire him to produce a masterpiece.
Carol Ann Duffy uses her poem to try and challenge these stereotypical
assumptions about Shakespeare’s wife. She re-imagines the gift of the
second best bed, not as a petty demonstration of marital discontent, but as
the place where husband and wife experienced their most romantic and
intimate moments. By doing so, she makes us question the relationship
between Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare, and the wife’s contribution to the
work of her husband.
Language and Imagery
Much of the imagery in this poem is sexual and allows us to see the
relationship between husband and wife as one that is both spiritually and
physically fulfilling. From being a mundane gift to a neglected spouse, the bed
in Anne’s eyes is transformed into “a spinning world/of forests, castles,
torchlight, cliff-tops, seas”. Duffy creates a magical world of romance and
intrigue, with subtle nods towards key elements in Shakespeare’s own plays,
such as the forest and castle in Macbeth or the sea of The Tempest. She
creates a fantasy landscape where Shakespeare’s writing and his love for
Anne are intertwined. Shakespeare’s words become “shooting stars which fell
to earth as kisses/on these lips”. His words are stars up in the sky that
everyone can see and admire, but his poetry is also something intimate that
only Anne can experience and fully comprehend. For her, his works are
something physical that she can touch, an experience of Shakespeare that
nobody else can have.
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 husband’s imagination, written into
existence through their passionate exchanges, whilst the second best bed
functions as “a page beneath his writer’s 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 Shakespeare’s 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 widow’s head”. He is preserved not in a coffin or urn, not even in his
writing, but in the thoughts inside Anne’s 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. Shakespeare’s most famous
poems about love were written in this form, and Duffy’s choice here suggests
that this poem is both a homage to Shakespeare’s 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.
Duffy’s 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
“lover’s words” as “shooting stars”. The metaphors allow the world of
Shakespeare’s poetry to intertwine with the physical reality of his marriage to
Anne.
Enjambment is used to allow the lines to flow into each other, again implying
the deep and intricate connection that existed between Anne and
Shakespeare.
The sibilance in lines such as “shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses”,
allow Duffy to evoke the sense of Shakespeare’s words sweeping across the
sky in an arc that begins and ends with Anne.
The alliteration in “living laughing love” allows the words to dance across the
page, suggesting the effervescence of the poetic relationship between the pair
and is suitably juxtaposed with the dull “dribbling” of the prose of the guests.
The poem contains a great deal of verbs such as “dancing”, “dive”, “dozed”
and “dribbling”. The verbs help to suggest that the couple’s relationship is an
active and passionate one.
Themes
This is a poem about love and one that could usefully be compared to
Shakespeare’s 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 people’s
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 Anne’s 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
Duffy’s 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 reader’s 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.
Seperate beds. In fact, I put a chair against my door,
near petrified. He was below, turning the spare room
into the tomb of Tutankhamun. You see, we were passionate
then,
in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly,
like presents, fast food. But now I feared his honeyed embrace,
the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.
And who, when it comes to the crunch, can live
with a heart of gold? That night, I dreamt I bore
his child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue
like a precious latch, its amber eyes
holding their pupils like flies. My dream-milk
burned in my breasts. I woke to the streaming sun.
So he had to move out. We'd a caravan
in the wilds, in a glade of its own. I drove him up
under cover of dark. He sat in the back.
And then I came home, the women who married the fool
who wished for gold. At first I visited, odd times,
parking the car a good way off, then walking.
You knew you were getting close. Golden trout
on the grass. One day, a hare hung from a larch,
a beautiful lemon mistake. And then his footprints,
glistening next to the river's path. He was thin,
delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan
from the woods. Listen. That was the last straw.
What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed
but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I sold
the contents of the house and came down here.
I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,
and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead. I miss most,
even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.
Background to the Poem
Carol Ann Duffy's Mrs Midas is a feminist reworking of the legendary Greek Myth 'King
Midas'. It is a dramatic monologue from the
perspective of Midas' suffering wife 'Mrs
Midas'. In previous variations of the King
Midas story there is no mention of a wife.
Carol Ann Duffy creates the fictional
persona in order to bring to light a female
perspective on the flaws within the male
species.