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Feminine Gospels

Feminine Gospels

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The name Larkin often comes up when Duffy is discussed. She is, of course, in many ways Larkin's antithesis, but they do occupy the same niche in their respective eras. Duffy is the poet of the multicultural noughties as Larkin was the bicycle-clipped representative of the dowdy, repressed fifties. The critic Justin Quinn has noted how many of Duffy's poems echo themes of Larkin's - you can pair them off: "Larkin's 'Posterity', Duffy's 'Biographer'; 'Ambulances', 'November'; 'Mr Bleaney', 'Room', etc". The Larkin/Duffy story has taken a surprising turn recently. Duffy's new book has a long poem set in her girls' school of the 1960s, "The Laughter of Stafford Girls' High", an allegory of the rise of feminism, sweeping away dowdy post-war austerity and buttoned-up emotional sterility. And here is a fat new Larkin book, recently published, Trouble at Willow Gables, girls' fiction written for private entertainment. Duffy's last word on Larkin: "As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets." Duffy represents the gaining of freedom through the literal escape from the school. The girls ‘jumped’ out the window, ‘bouncing around in the snow.’ The simile of ‘like girls on the moon’ is polysemous. On one hand, ‘moon’ connects with classic feminine imagery, demonstrating that they have reclaimed power within The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High. Moreover, ‘Moon’ also suggests remoteness, they have escaped society and fled to the safety of the ‘moon’. Being away from society, they have finally been able to escape. Their grappling with freedom inspires Miss Dunn, ‘flung open her window and breathed in the passionate cold’. Dunn is empowered by the girls, their actions causing a ‘wild thought seeded’ in her head. Mean Time (Anvil, 1994) continued in this nostalgic vein with the addition of poems about broken and budding relationships. It contains what are perhaps her finest short lyric poems. The title poem, "Prayer" ("Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer / utters itself") is a sonnet and a prayer for faithless times. Does she think that in a secular society poetry to some extent takes the place of religion? "It does for me: I don't believe in God." Then came The World's Wife (1999), with her new publisher, Picador. The first stanza ends with ‘loved’, emphasized by a caesura and end stop. This emphasis is a clear foreshadowing of what is to come, each of the four women suffering from male love and attention. Politics by Carol Ann Duffy". The Guardian. 13 June 2009. Archived from the original on 16 April 2012.

Duffy continues the freeing laughter. Geraldine Ruth is described as ‘yodelled/a laugh with the full, open, blooming rose’. The use of enjambment across these lines is again used to increase the metrical speed, reflecting the moment of explosive laughter. The adjectives, ‘full’ and ‘open’ compound to present a moment of total freedom. The reference to ‘rose’ could link to femininity, Duffy presenting women’s liberation.The reference to ‘light’ is normally a positive association. Yet, for Monroe, even the most positive things are subverted. Duffy uses ‘under the lights’ to display how exposed Monroe was. Especially surrounding the rumored affair with President Kenedy, the world blamed her instead of the wildly powerful man who manipulated her.

Out of this ugliness women metamorphose under our eye. A shopaholic becomes a shop. In "Beautiful", a series of women appear to be manifestations of the same being, defined only by the ability to excite the desire of men. Helen of Troy changes into Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe puts Sinatra on her record player before going off to sing "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy. The dubious gift of beauty passes to Princess Diana, who obediently widens her eyes for the flashbulbs of the press. Helen and Cleopatra elude us with a certain dignity - well, they are essentially myths - but in our latterday world, to be desired brings more danger than privilege and has precious little to do with magic. Diana is insulted even as she smiles, and will soon feel "History's stinking breath in her face".The hallucinatory, almost feverish, presentation of Monroe’s life begins with ‘slept’. Duffy presents the woman exploited from the moment she wakes right till she sleeps. Everything in between is connected with hellish asyndeton, propelling the poem onwards, ‘coffee, pills, booze’. The reference to addictive substances foreshadows Monroe’s death, overdosing on sleeping pills. Miss Batt and Miss Fife ‘had moved’ together ‘to a city’, finally experiencing true freedom. They ‘drank in a dark bar where women danced, cheek to cheek’, being able to express their love publicly. In her new happy life, Miss Fife dreams of the oppressive school. She pictures it as a ‘huge ship/floating away’. Miss Batt’s lips, ‘a warm mouth’ wakes her, causing the ‘school sank in her mind’. The semantics of water return, symbolises how the school was lost to the battle of laughter. Though nothing is known of Helen’s death, the other three — significantly — died gruesomely; Cleopatra used a poisenous snake to bite and kill her; Marilyn Munroe committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping tablets, and Diana died in a car crash pursued by the press seeking photographs.

a b c d e f g Forbes, Peter (31 August 2002). "Winning Lines". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 13 February 2013. The budding relationship between Miss Batt and Miss Fife is also explored in this section of The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High. The balance of ‘Music and maths’ reflects the teachers, both complimenting each other in unexpected ways. There is a comforting atmosphere evoked between the two, ‘Miss Batt’s small piano’ filling the scene with joyous music. Although unexplored, there is a certain affection between them, suggested by ‘woman’s silently virtuous love’. The use of ‘silently’ suggests they have not yet told each other their mutual feelings. Following this, these stanzas reveal how invasive the media was in pursuit of Diana. Although loved by many, ‘The whole town came’, she was still constantly followed by the media. The repetition of ‘stare’, combined with polysyndeton represents the invasive media. The constant, repeated, invasion followed Diana until her death.

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a b Allardice, Lisa (27 October 2018). "Carol Ann Duffy: 'With the evil twins of Trump and Brexit ... there was no way of not writing about that, it is just in the air' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 27 October 2018. Duffy notes Helen to have an unobtainable beauty, ‘daughter of the gods’ and ‘divinely fair’. The reference to beauty continues in ‘pearl’, Duffy using this to suggest the value which beauty holds in society. Duffy then uses asyndeton, connecting many adjectives to describe how beautiful Helen was.

Not all the fantasies carry the same charge. "Work" takes a single mum, working her fingers to the bone to fill her larder, and develops her problem through a rhetoric of absurdity that leaves her at the heart of the capitalist internet trying to feed a planet. Sometimes the gritty details make a familiar point surprising. An anorexic shrivels like Alice until she is blown away as a seed, to nestle at length in the stomach of a gloriously self-indulgent eater. She has become literally that thin woman notoriously found inside every fat one, except in this version, she has no wish to get out .The stories of the women are told by a third person narrator. The tone is ironic and bleakly humorous. The pace is fast, relying particularly on lists that carry their own significance to the reader. Carol Ann Duffy - Poetry - Scottish Poetry Library". www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk . Retrieved 16 February 2018. Demara, Bruce (7 July 2016). "The Bizzaro History of the Poet L aureate". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 5 November 2016.



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