Carol Ann Duffy
Biography
Poet, playwright and freelance writer Carol Ann Duffy was born on 23
December 1955 in Glasgow and read philosophy at Liverpool University. She
is a former editor of the poetry magazine Ambit and is a regular reviewer and
broadcaster. She moved from London to Manchester in 1996 and began to
lecture in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her papers were
acquired by the Robert W. Woodruff Library of Emory University in 1999, and
in October 2000 she was awarded a grant of £75,000 over a five-year period
by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.
Her poetry collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a
Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a
Somerset Maugham Award; The Other Country (1990); Mean Time (1993),
which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best
Poetry Collection of the Year); and The World's Wife (1999). Feminine
Gospels (2002) is a celebration of the female condition. The Good Child's
Guide to Rock N Roll (2003) is her latest collection for children. In Out of
Fashion (2004) she creates a vital dialogue between classic and
contemporary poets over the two arts of poetry and fashion.
Carol Ann Duffy is also an acclaimed playwright, and has had plays
performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre in London.
Her plays include Take My Husband (1982), Cavern of Dreams (1984), Little
Women, Big Boys (1986) and Loss (1986), a radio play.
She received an Eric Gregory Award in 1984 and a Cholmondeley Award in
1992 from the Society of Authors, the Dylan Thomas Award from the Poetry
Society in 1989 and a Lannan Literary Award from the Lannan Foundation
(USA) in 1995. She was awarded an OBE in 1995, a CBE in 2001 and
became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999.
Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester and is Creative Director of the Writing
School at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her latest collection of poetry is
Rapture (2005).
Of her own writing she has said:
“I'm 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.”
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 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.
Carol Ann Duffy
Havisham
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 nor 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.
Questions
1.
Why does the poet omit Miss Havisham's title and refer to her by her
surname only?
2.
Why does the poet write “spinster” on its own? What does Miss
Havisham think about this word and its relevance to her?
3.
What is the effect of “Nooooo” and “b-b-breaks”? Why are these words
written in this way?
4.
What is the meaning of the image of “a red balloon bursting”?
5.
How far does the poet want us to sympathize with Miss Havisham?
6.
Does the reader have to know about Great Expectations to understand
the poem?
7.
Does Miss Havisham have a fair view of men? What do you think of
her view of being an unmarried woman?
8.
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?
Havisham
Commentary
Duffy obviously takes the figure of Miss Havisham from Dickens's Great
Expectations. But the question is why? To what effect? What, in this preexisting figure, presents itself as an opportunity for the writer? How is Duffy's
figure different from Dickens's? One simple thing: The title is Havisham,
rather than Miss Havisham - which is how the character is always referred to
throughout Great Expectations. Why, to what effect? Perhaps Miss defines
the character socially - whereas the poem concentrates on the nature of the
character's individual feelings - the character's psychological/sexual nature,
rather than her social being. The absence of the formal title also makes the
'feel' of the poem blunter, more simply there, perhaps. Duffy's poem gives
Miss Havisham a body, a knot of desires which Dickens does not attempt.
beloved sweetheart bastard - The poem begins as if addressed to the jilting
bridegroom. It doesn't continue in this direct address - by the end of the poem
the male figure will have become a male corpse - any male (generalised), and
radically rendered into an object (no longer even alive). The most striking
thing about the first sentence is the combination of 'love' (beloved sweetheart)
and hatred (bastard). Dickens's character is motivated by revenge alone against the male sex in general. Duffy is interested in the unstable
combination of desire and hatred; Havisham's desire - her sexual being - is
not simply cancelled out by the unreliability of the bridegroom: it continues, as
Havisham's body must continue - in an uncertain, knotted compound. This is
what I take to be central to the poem and Duffy's treatment of the pre-existing
character: Duffy gives the character a body, a continuing sexual being
.
dark green pebbles - The description of her eyes stands in here for the
effects upon her psychology of her continuous hatred: pebbles because the
resultant hardness in her feelings; dark because of her 'evil' thoughts of
revenge (wishing him dead) - but also because the mix of her feelings are not
simply to be understood, even by herself; green out of envy (of the man, of
anyone with a happier life).
ropes on the back of my hands - The 'ropes' are the veins on her hands,
swollen by age. But note - throughout the poem it is almost as if she blames
the man for her getting old, as if ageing is the consequence of her
abandonment, her lack of fulfillment. And in this line, the 'effects' of her
unhappiness are fantasized as the means of her revenge (strangle).
Spinster - This one word sentence is what she is, what society sums her up
as, what she has been condemned to be by the man's abandonment of her almost as if there would be nothing more to say about her for the rest of
society.
stink and remember - What her life is - in her own eyes: decay and memory that is all that she's been left with to do. The absence of any meaningful,
physical action in the present is central to her bitterness. What is there for her
to do? (whole days in bed...)
cawing Nooooo - Cawing makes the woman sound animal-like. Throughout
the poem, language is under pressure, breaking down. (curses that are
sounds not words...and the last word b-b-b-breaks; her tongue only becomes
fluent in dream, and then only in kissing, not speech). Both sexual passion
and speech require a partner.
the dress - One of the few visual details which is simply taken from Dickens.
her, myself In looking at herself in the mirror, there is a momentary failure to
recognise herself as herself. She has aged so that she no longer looks like
her self-image. This change in appearance, this ageing without having 'lived',
is felt not as something natural and expected, but as something 'done' to her,
and as such, done by somebody - the jilting bridegroom.
some nights better - In this verse, in dream, Havisham can momentarily
enact her desire. The verse is sexual and physical in a way quite impossible
for Dickens - even if he had wanted to suggest something of this continuing
desire in his character (which he did not).
bite awake - Even in this verse expressing desire, it ends however on a
moment of hate and revenge. (the progress from mouth and ear, then down does this fantasize a revenging emasculation of the bridegroom's body?)
Love's hate - The third verse's combination of love and hate is confirmed in
this phrase which straddles the break between verses - so, drawing attention
to the oxymoron, the unstable mixture of Havisham's emotions.
red balloon - The balloon - like the wedding cake - is suggested by the
celebrations which did not take place. Red for passion, physicality - love;
bursting, for hate, and also the intolerable emotional pressure which the poem
expresses.
male corpse - The corpse and the long slow honeymoon combines both love
and revenge; long and slow is a peculiar combination of enjoyment and
torture. The tone of this line is a world away from Dickens' Miss Havisham; it
sounds more like a kind of psychopath in its flip sexual aggression. So kind of
'strong' is it that perhaps only the stutter of the last line restores the 'pathos' of
the situation.
don't think it's only the heart - Dickens presents a character whose
sentiments have become twisted, whose heart (as she melodramatically
announces to the young Pip) has been broken. Duffy's character is more
fundamentally under pressure - physical desire, language - these 'basic'
human attributes - have both been refused proper expression, and have
become knotted and skewed. The stammered b-b-b-breaks enacts a kind of
collapse caused by this.
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
Valentine
This poem is written in the first person. The speaker appears to be the poet,
addressing her lover as "you". In fact, Carol Ann Duffy wrote Valentine after a
radio producer asked her to write an original poem for St. Valentine's Day.
(Valentine was published in 1993, in the collection Mean Time.) But the poem
is universal: it could be from any lover to any beloved (for example, there is no
indication of the sex of either the "I" or the "you"). The poem, on the surface,
is about the giving of an unusual present for St. Valentine's Day, but really is
an exploration of love between two people. This is a good text to write about,
because it has a single central image, which is developed throughout the
poem: the onion is an extended metaphor for love.
The form of the poem supports its argument (the ideas in it) as Duffy uses
single isolated lines to show why she rejects the conventional Valentines: "Not
a red rose or a satin heart...Not a cute card or a kissogram." Why not?
Because each has long ceased to be original and has been sent millions of
times. The symbolism of roses and hearts is often overlooked, while cards
and kissograms may be expensive but mean little. As an artist, Ms. Duffy
should be able to think of something more distinctive, and she does.
Duffy in effect lists reasons why the onion is an appropriate symbol of love.
First, the conventional romantic symbol of the moon is concealed in it. The
moon is supposed to govern women's passions. The brown skin is like a
paper bag, and the shiny pale onion within is like the moon. The "light" which
it promises may be both its literal brightness and metaphorical understanding
(of love) or enlightenment. The removing of the papery outer layers suggests
the "undressing" of those who prepare to make love. There may also be a pun
(play on words here) as "dressing" (such as French dressing or salad
dressing) is often found with onions in the kitchen.
The onion is like a lover because it makes one cry. The verb "blind" may also
suggest the traditional idea of love's (or Cupid's) being blind. And the onion
reflects a distorted image of anyone who looks at it, as if this reflection were a
"wobbling photo" - an image which won't keep still, as the onion takes time to
settle on a surface. The flavour of the onion is persistent, so this taste is like a
kiss which lasts, which introduces the idea of faithfulness which will match
that of the lovers ("possessive and faithful...for as long as we are"). When
women cry, for some reason, they often go to the mirror - so, the lover is
blinded with tears and staring in the mirror.
The onion is a series of concentric rings, each smaller than the other until one
finds a ring the size of a wedding ring ("platinum", because of the colour). But
note the phrase "if you like": the lover is given the choice. Thus the poem, like
a traditional Valentine, contains a proposal of marriage. There is also a hint of
a threat in the suggestion that the onion is lethal, as its scent clings "to your
knife". The poet shows how the knife which cuts the onion is marked with its
scent, as if ready to punish any betrayal.
Note the form of this poem: Duffy writes colloquially (as if speaking) so single
words or phrases work as sentences: "Here...Take it...Lethal". The ends of
lines mark pauses, and most of them have a punctuation mark to show this.
The stanza breaks mark longer pauses, so that we see how the poem is to be
read aloud. The poem appeals to the senses especially of sight (striking visual
images of light, shape and colour), touch (the "fierce kiss") and smell (the
"scent" clinging "to your fingers" and "knife"). The poem uses conventional
Valentines as a starting point, before showing how the onion is much more
true to the nature of love. The poem seems at first to be rather comical (an
onion as a Valentine is surely bizarre) but in fact is a very serious analysis of
love.
Valentine
Commentary
not a red rose - The poem makes explicit what any poem must do: make it
new (Ezra Pound's phrase) - a poem has to take the most common
experiences - of love, desire, betrayal, etc - and reclothe them in fresh
phrases. This is not only to be 'original'; more importantly, the 'promise' of a
poem to its reader is that this new phrasing, this new imagining, will get closer
to the 'truth' of the situation, what it really feels like. Any poem is a revision of
those poems which have gone before it; this poem takes, if you like, the most
hackneyed theme - love -, and the most hackneyed format - the 'poems' which
appear in St Valentine's Day cards - and tries to re-imagine them in the
service of 'truth'. ('I am trying to be truthful').
Perhaps the relative 'obviousness' of the poem's aim - doing what all poems
do, but more explicitly than most - makes the poem feel a bit 'programmatic', a
bit self-conscious in its 'originality'? That judgment is properly for each
individual reader to decide.
I give - The poem's basic structure is based on the presentation of a gift: the
description of the gift (I give..); the actual offering ( Here.); the moment of it
passing from hand to hand ( Take it.). Its 'revision' of earlier poems, of what
might be expected, is in the form of the gift offered. (And what is being
offered, represented by the onion? - both love, and the knowledge of what
'love' is - its combination of both pleasures and pains, both - though opposite equally intense and unavoidable.) The gift will avoid the 'sentimental'
simplifications of the conventional gifts (and the conventional poems) - a red
rose or a satin heart - ; these would make the experience just simply 'sweet'.
The poem's choice of 'gift' will avoid the sweetness; it's more pungent and
complex than that! And by the end of the poem, the 'gift' will imply a kind of
difficulty in reaching a decision: is it a gift 'you' (the addressee in the poem,
the reader beyond it) really wants? (Except, of course, there's an irony in the
whole set-up of 'love' being offered: we tend to fall in love, whatever our
intentions - it's not something that really can be accepted or refused: it just
happens.)
an onion - There's a deliberate baldness and shock in the naming of the gift.
The reader is intended to be surprised. The rest of the poem will work
through and show the appropriateness of the comparison of Love to an onion
- in terms of its pungency, its ability to bring tears to the eyes, its contrast to
conventional 'sweetness'. The poem's choice of a deliberately, almost
grotesquely, surprising comparison, and the poem's working through of that
comparison - almost as a kind of implicit 'argument' to convince the reader of
that appropriateness - might remind the reader of the Metaphysical poets of
the 17th century, with their use of the 'conceit'. Duffy seems to me to drawn
to a similar combination of the intellectually and emotionally intense - alert to
both ideas and bodies - which characterises the work of a poet like John
Donne.
(The use of an onion to carry 'heavy' meanings is not unknown elsewhere. In
the verse play Peer Gynt by the 19th century playwright Henrik Ibsen, Peer
strips an onion while comparing its various layers to the stages of his life. The
point is that he is trying to find the 'essence' of himself - and of course, there
is no such 'essence', no central core:
What an incredible number of layers!
Don't we get to the heart of it soon?
[He pulls the whole onion to pieces}
No, I'm damned if we do. Right down to the centre there's nothing but
layers - smaller and smaller.....Nature is witty!
The poem also has that sense of bottomless 'complexity', undecidability - that
life is a question without an answer, that Nature as it were sets a 'problem'
without deigning to provide a solution. (There's also 'Glass Onion' by John
Lennon on The White Album by the Beatles, while we're on the subject of
onions in literature.)
moon wrapped in brown paper - The initial point is visual: the luminous
white of the onion wrapped by the dull brown of the outermost covering. But
the comparison is also richer than this: through the metaphor, Love promises
both the 'romantic' idealisations promised by the conventional poems (and
think how often in 'sentimental' poems and songs the moon crops up) - but
also it exists here in a 'realistic', domestic, everyday context; it is both banal
and intense. (Throughout the poem its central 'strategy' is to look for the
combination of discrepant elements in Love - the avoidance of simplifications.)
careful undressing of love This - and the line before it - have some
conventional delicacy, some conventional 'romanticism'. The association of
love with light appears elsewhere in Duffy's poems (for example, First Love )
Also - as elsewhere - love is always presented as both an emotional and
physical, sensual experience. The delicacy here, though, will develop and
change in the poem - by the penultimate verse, the 'careful undressing' will
have become a 'fierce kiss'.
blind you with tears - The second point of the comparison - and perhaps the
most obvious: onions make you cry, so does love.
a wobbling photo of grief - Similar ranges of ideas, associations of image,
appear in First Love . The photo wobbles because it is being seen through
tears.
I am trying to be truthful - A line which works as a self-justification - in reply
to an unspoken reaction on the part of the addressee to the second verse. It's
as though the addressee/reader would be shocked by the association of love
and grief. Perhaps it rather overstates that presumed shock - after all, plenty
of popular songs make precisely such an association - but, tactically, this, and
the dismissive 'cute' of what the poem sets up as the only alternative to its
view, in the next line: Not a cute card or a kissogram - allows the poem to go
on to be 'harder', more intense in the discrepancies it identifies as constituting
the experience of Love.
I give you an onion - A reprise - the repetition of the second line is made
before the poem goes onto what it takes to be 'harder', less commonly
acceptable 'truths' about love. The reprise is like a fresh gathering of breath
before a final, greater effort.
fierce kiss - The third point of comparison: the pungency of taste of the onion
is compared to the sheer intensity of Love. This is more than the sometime
unhappiness of unhappy love - which is all that the poem has so far used to
revise the 'cute', sentimental simplifications. It refers to the intensity of the
compulsions, the shaking vividness of the memories (a running theme in the
volume as a whole) produced, by the experience of Love.
stay on your lips - Compare to as close to my lips as lipsticks in First Love .
possessive and faithful Note the combination of terms: one is normally taken
to be critical, the other as admirable - both are asserted as unavoidable in,
definitive of, the experience of Love. Note also that both are normally
assumed to be permanent, to last (they are defined by their continuance) - but
they are compromised by the slightly cynical sounding last line of the verse:
for as long as we are - which seems to imply: not long. The experience of
Love is both intense, but doubtful in its duration.
shrink to a wedding ring - Fourth point of comparison: the small rings at the
centre of the onion are visually compared to a wedding ring - light, shiny
(platinum) and circular like a ring. Note the critical implications in the word
shrink: Love is much greater - in its intensity - to the rather formalised social
arrangements of marriage. If you like suggests a kind of insouciant
permission - as though it is an irrelevant concession.
lethal - What does 'lethal' refer to - the experience of Love in itself (and that
would pick up the threat implicit in the last word 'knife'.), or the shrinkage of
the experience and its intensity to the formality of marriage?
cling to your fingers - The fifth point of comparison - much like the third: the
onion's scent, its pungency. Its point is its lasting impression (strong verb cling - suggesting a kind of unavoidability, and a kind of desperation - stronger
than the earlier, less striking stay on your lips, and the verb itself is repeated
twice) The phrase both suggests the inescapability of memory, and also more
physical associations in its reference to fingers (a good enough example of
how Duffy always touches upon a kind of physical, bodily intensity when
writing on Love - there's little in her poetry which attempts to idealise Love
away from bodies - as there is in Shakespeare sonnets, say.
knife - The last line - picking up from 'lethal' - sounds more like a threat than a
present. A knife is 'natural' and harmless in its association with an onion - but
it now carries over into something a little unplaced in its association with love suggesting something of Love's ability to damage and hurt others (suggested
in other poems in the volume, like Havisham and Adultery.)
Anne Hathaway
'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ...'
(from Shakespeare's will)
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
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) 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”. 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 strictly too modern to be spoken by the historical Anne
Hathaway (especially the word order and the meanings) but the lexicon
(vocabulary) is not obviously anachronistic - that is, most of the words here
could have been spoken by the real Anne Hathaway, though not quite with
these meanings and probably not in this order.
Questions
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?
6.
Does this poem change the way you think of William Shakespeare?