Rapture

Product Information

In Duffy’s poem the love she describes is fluctuating, romantic but also painful. Although it ultimately relates to a relationship on earth the religious hints are clearly present. This is quite dramatic. Once again this helps cement the idea of the rapture in our heads. However, I think any hint of religious undertones is almost irrelevant. I think this is supposed to point to the idea of a situation that has become really mundane. Queuing evokes the idea of waiting. It sounds like the narrator and their significant other are in a real bind if that is how dull things have got! This is another enjambment line. Gone is the sharp sense of history, the wry snap of modern life, the distinct yet palatable feminism; all those competing stories she delighted in telling have dissolved, it seems, in the single most important story of all, that of the human love affair.”

Once again the sky is referenced but the change of tone changes the view of the sky. Here the sky is still described as large but there are suggestions of it being a network joining places together. Perhaps a metaphor for how the narrator is now joined with their lover? the poems are rich, beautiful and heart-rending in their exploration of the deepest recesses of human emotion, both joy and pain. " There was speculation that she might become Poet Laureate upon the death of Ted Hughes in 1999, but the post went to Andrew Motion. She declared that the position was worthwhile as it was ‘good to have someone who is prepared to say that poetry is part of our national life’, and in an interview in The Independent predicted that poetry would ‘become more important and take a larger part in our lives in the next century’. Finally appointed Poet Laureate in 2009, she was the first female and the first Scottish Poet Laureate in the role’s 400 year history. Rapture is a story of a love affair, from it's beginnings, through all its ups and downs to it's ending' The trajectory of a love affair from its giddy beginnings, with poems of almost prelapsarian sensuality, to deep love

Hour (2005) - Key takeaways

Sonnet sequence: a group of sonnets written by one poet with a unifying theme or story. 'Hour' by Carol Ann Duffy: summary 'Hour' by Carol Ann Duffy: Summary and Analysis This is quite skilfully done as the narrator uses the word assonance to prove their point but also uses assonance in the line. Clever stuff! I think what is trying to be said here is that they try and break with the norm to attain bliss, but up until this point it doesn’t seem to have been working! The second line is full of innuendo. The narrator goes to “bed” which you could associate with sex and then says that they dreamed of the other person “hard” which may not be an innuendo but the fact that it is used twice for emphasis suggests that it is indeed an innuendo! The third line refers to the way that the narrator’s love interest’s name sounds. The description is very melodramatic and over the top, this emphasizes the passion they feel. In closing the stanza they claim that the way they are feeling is like a spell. This once again suggests that it is beyond their control and that it is something that is being done unto them rather than an experience they are necessarily enjoying. From lines ten to twelve, time remains a present theme alongside allusions to nature, bringing traditional romantic imagery to the forefront of the poem.

They further go on to explain the strong emotions that love makes them feel. The image of a tiger, ready to kill is particularly striking. The narrator uses powerful words to convey a dark undertone to the poem. In this third line you can see the words “kill”, “flame” and “fierce” none of these would be readily associated with love, but have a stronger association with lust and desire. The stanza is rounded off by the narrator talking about how their loved one entered their life. How they strolled in. This, at least for me, created an image of somebody with nonchalance and arrogance. Poetry is above all, a series of intense moments... I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotions'This is the third poem in Duffy’s collection entltled Rapture. Of the fifty-two poems eighteen are sonnets. The sonnet template is favoured by poets for serious subjects, including love. Duffy traces the progress of a love affair, with all its fluctuations, joys and heartache.

I want to be both the lover and her beloved. I want to be the longing and the clamoring, lusty, romantic language. Desire’s tendrils spiral coyly, and they will climb on a mop of floppy hyacinth—or on a dead vine. One is wrapped around my finger, as I crouch before “Lady Margaret”, Passiflora (passion flower) in my garden. I’m wrapped around Duffy’s finger, body, soul, and poet-mind. The narrator uses interesting language in the first line of this stanza of the poem. They personify their thoughts and in doing so create a powerful piece of imagery. The fact that it refers to their thoughts as “uninvited” suggests that they are powerless to control how they feel and wouldn’t want to feel that way. This line definitely suggests that the narrator can’t get the object of their affection out of their head. Secondly, it could be a reference to how the rings of a tree can tell its age, suggesting that the rings of their finger shows the years of their relationship within them. Aside from this, in the second, Duffy also uses much positive, yet physical imagery to describe the traits of her lover. The metaphor‘blessed in your flesh, blood, and hair, as though they were lovely garments’ seems to show her gratefulness for the closeness the two experienced, to the point as though they were connected as one being. Also, the very presence of her lover seemed to ‘pleasure the air’, which also seems to lift the melancholy air the poem holds. All this physical imagery could be linked to how Duffy feels they have such a close connection in their relationship. The final poem in the collection takes lines from Robert Browning as its epigraph: "That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, / Lest you should think he never could recapture / That first fine careless rapture!" The quotation gives Duffy both the title of her collection and the title for this poem - "Over". The affair may be "over", but in her verse she can sing it "over" and the effect is uplifting and thrilling. Her adult poetry collections are 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); The World's Wife (1999); Feminine Gospels (2002), a celebration of the female condition; Rapture (2005), winner of the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize; The Bees (2011), winner of the 2011 Costa Poetry Award and shortlisted for the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize; The Christmas Truce (2011), Wenceslas: A Christmas Poem (2012), illustrated by Stuart Kolakovic; Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday (2014) and Sincerity (2018). Her children's poems are collected in New & Collected Poems for Children (2009). In 2012, to mark the Diamond Jubilee, she compiled Jubilee Lines, 60 poems from 60 poets each covering one year of the Queen's reign. In the same year, she was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize.

Comments

Some of Duffy's phrases will not let you be. Living our ordinary lives without passion, we are "queuing for death"; speaking ordinary phrases without telling the whole truth means that "words, / are the cauls of the unsaid". The grammar and the thematic structures of Duffy's poems can seem compacted, as in the opening line of "Rapture": "Thought of by you all day, I think of you." But if you sometimes have to work hard to unknot Duffy's sense, the unravelling rewards. The word gaped in the final line may have significance as it has subtle sexual connotations as the word is often associated with an ill-fitting blouse. Another provocative piece of language used. Bird’s song is a classic piece of symbolism. In fact, it is so classic it could almost be considered a cliché. Duffy of course would know this and I think she uses it here with just a pinch of irony. Perhaps then the birds are not symbolic at all and the narrator is just taking in the scenery! Either way, this is a nice nod to romantic poetry drawing on nature to evoke certain emotions, in this case, love. Clearly, there is a massive transformation and the tone of the poem has changed dramatically. It is at this point in the poem we start to understand why it is called the rapture. Speaking of which note once again the reference to heaven. The poem presents itself in one single stanza but is effectively a sonnet as it contains fourteen lines. It seems to be a classic Shakespearean sonnet with the rhyming pattern ABABCDCDEFEFGG. It also ties into this tradition by being written in iambic pentameter. The poem, as is commonly the case with sonnets, is a love poem of sorts.

Carol Ann Duffy, one of the most significant names in contemporary British poetry, has achieved that rare feat of both critical and commercial success. Her work is read and enjoyed equally by critics, academics and lay readers, and it features regularly on both university syllabuses and school syllabuses. Some critics have accused Duffy of being too populist, but on the whole her work is highly acclaimed for being both literary and accessible, and she is regarded as one of Britain’s most well-loved and successful contemporary poets.She is a truly brilliant modern poet who has stretched our imaginations by putting the whole range of human experiences into lines that capture the emotions perfectly.” 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 honour since its creation in 1616. Her collection Standing Female Nude (1985) established her as a key figure in poetry. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love.