Comparing and Contrasting Six Duffy Poems

Comparing and Contrasting Six Duffy Poems

Anne Hathaway

Passion of love in happy, fulfilling relationship:

“My living laughing love” Alliteration emphasises vivacity, fun and passion of her husband.

“The bed we loved in was a spinning world / of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas” Metaphor - turning Earth and features of setting in Shakespeare’s plays - conveys how actively and imaginatively they made love.

“My lover’s words / were shooting starswhich fell to earth as kisses / on these lips” Possessive pronoun shows closeness; view of him as lover - far more exciting than just husband. Metaphor describes scintillating scope of words spoken while making love, leading to passionate kissing.

“Romance / and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste” References to Shakespeare’s plays suggest passion and excitement of sex; references to senses show sensual, physical pleasure of their relationship.

Havisham

Bitterness and vengeful hatred of love that has ended sourly:

“Beloved sweetheart bastard” Oxymoron to show contrast between former and present feelings about lover who jilted her. Plosive consonants as if spitting out words in bitterness.

“ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with” Metaphor for veins, prominent as she has aged, indicating violent desire to kill former lover.

“Puce curses that are sounds not words.” Livid purple colour symbolises intense rage and incomplete sentence suggests incoherency of enraged sounds that fail to become complete words to curse him.

“I suddenly bite awake” Her erotic dream ends violently as kissing becomes biting to hurt him instead of to please.

“Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon” Persona issues a challenging command. Ultimate revenge would be his death and opportunity to brutalise his body over extended period instead of pleasuring him on honeymoon.

Valentine

Pragmatic view of love rather than romantic, honestly acknowledging that it can be deep and faithful but potentially hurtful and not permanent.

“Not a red rose” Prominence of “Not” as first word in line shows rejection of tradition romantic love symbolised by “red rose”.

“It will blind you with tears / like a lover.” Combination of alliteration and simile to emphasise that like chemicals in onions which cause tears, so will lovers make us weep.

“Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips /possessive and faithful / as we are / for as long as we are” Metaphor of lingering taste of onion suggesting passion lasting some time and “faithful” exclusive relationship at present but only for so long – not interminably.

“Lethal. / Its scent will cling to your fingers, / cling to your knife” Abiding odour of onion clinging to fingers suggests attempt to hold on but “knife” implies wounding and pain of ending relationship, cutting someone out of one’s life.

Originally

A poem about how identity, belonging and relationships can change, but not completely

Personal experience of moving from Scotland to England and struggling to retain identity.

“We came from our own country”, 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.”

Examines the problems of identity and relationship with where you are from:

“Your accent wrong”, “My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
in my head. I want our own country, I said.”

Identity as a state of mind rather than a geographical location

“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.”

Childhood to adulthood also examined as a state of transition

“All childhood is an emigration.”, “But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,
and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only
a skelf of shame.”

War Photographer

Portrays how identity and belonging can change according to experience, also with relationships.

(relationships) The surface subject of the poem is the war photographer of the title but at a deeper level the poem explores the difference between "Rural England" and places where wars are fought (Northern Ireland, the Lebanon and Cambodia), as well as between the indifference of the readers and the suffering of the people in the photographs.

“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.”
“The reader's eyeballs prick with tears between bath and pre-lunch beers.”
(identity and belonging)The photographer in the poem is anonymous: he could be any of those who record scenes of war. He is not so much a particular individual as, like the poet, an observer and recorder of others' lives. He is an outsider who moves between two worlds but is comfortable in neither.

“He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays beneath his hands which did not tremble then though seem to now.”

“From aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns a living and they do not care.”

Mrs Midas

Portrays how love can go wrong if one partner is dishonest or selfish, a broken relationship.

Greed is certainly a recurring theme as this what motivated Midas to make his wife in the first place and the damaging effects are portrayed throughout with both husband and wife, in the end, being left alone to suffer the effects of wishing to possess a substance which ultimately ‘feeds no one.’

“He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne. The look on his face was strange, wild, vain.”

Consequences of our actions: This is a prevalent theme as both Midas and his wife pay the price of not really taking the time to deliberate and think through what would follow if they chose one action over another.

“It was then that I started to scream. He sank to his knees.”, “What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed but lack of thought for me.”

Loneliness and Solitude are all that is left for both characters by the end of the poem as a result of one selfish act. A life of solitude is chosen as soon as Midas is ‘granted’ his foolish and selfish wish.

“I miss most, even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.”

A wide range of emotions is expressed through the persona of Mrs Midas as she separates herself from her husband and his selfish actions. She leaves him and reflects the loss of their physical relationship and the chance to have a baby with her husband.

“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.”

Common idea in four of the poems: passion.

“spinning world”; “shooting stars”; “Romance/and drama”. (Love and sensual passion in Anne Hathaway)

“Prayed for it / so hard”; “Puce curses”; “Love’s/hate”. (Passionate hatred in Havisham.)

“Fierce kiss”; “possessive”; “Its scent will cling”. (Intense, dangerously possessive passion in Valentine.)

“You see, we were passionate then, in those halcyon days”“ I miss most,even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.” (unfulfilled passion in Mrs Midas)

Common idea in four of the poems: sex.

“his touch/a verb dancing in the centre of a noun”; “the bed/a page beneath his writer’s hands”; “by touch, by scent, by taste” (Imaginative, sensual sex in Anne Hathaway)

“the lost body over me, /my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear then down” (Jilted bride’s erotic dreams in Havisham)

“the careful undressing of love”; “fierce kiss” (Removal of onion skin compared with undressing a lover and intensity of physical relationship in Valentine.)

“Unwrapping each other, rapidly, like presents, fast food.” (a previously strong physical relationship is now impossible because of Midas’s selfish actions)

Common idea in four of the poems: relationships.

“my widow’s head”; “that next best bed”; “the bed we loved in” (Memories of a happy marriage in Anne Hathaway)

“Spinster”; “white veil”; “stabbed at a wedding cake”; “long slow honeymoon” (Bitter feelings about being a jilted bride – an engagement that didn’t work out – in Havisham)

“faithful as we are / for as long as we are”; “a wedding-ring / if you like”; (Pragmatic view that relationships are finite - eventually partners will stop being faithful – and casual, take-it-or-leave it attitude to marriage in Valentine)

“Separate beds. In fact, I put a chair against my door, near petrified.”(her relationship has broken down because of Midas’s selfishness. She still longs for him but they cannot fulfil their relationship and have a child – Mrs Midas)

Common idea in four of the poems: love brings unhappiness.

“It will blind you with tears”; “make your reflection / a wobbling photo of grief”; “possessive”; “Lethal” (Lovers make us weep or can become dangerously possessive which destroys love – Valentine)

“wished him dead”; “Whole days / in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall”; “Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.” (Desire for vengeance and deep depression – Havisham)

“Romance / and drama”; “My living laughing love” (CONTRAST with the happiness love brings in Anne Hathaway)

“What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness.”(her relationship with Midas has brought her lonelieness and lack of fulfilment because he has been selfish - Mrs Midas)

Common idea in three of the poems: wounding and pain.

“fierce kiss”; “Lethal”; “cling to your knife” (Intensity of love can be destructive; “knife” suggests cutting someone out of one’s life, causing hurt and pain – Valentine)

“ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with”; “I suddenly bite awake”; “red balloon bursting…Bang”; “stabbed at a wedding cake”; “male corpse” (Violent words, including vengeful sexual violence – Havisham)

“I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head / as he held me upon that next best bed.” (CONTRAST cherished memories of a happy, loving marriage ended only by death of the husband in Anne Hathaway)

Common idea in three of the poems – identity and belonging

“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.” (The poets identity changes but there is something of her old self left behind – Originally)

“Rural England. Home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,”, “From aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns a living and they do not care.”(The photographer neither belongs in England or in his war zones – he is stuck between the two, he no longer has the same identity as other English people who look at and then ignore his photographs - War Photographer)

“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.”(Midas no longer belongs at home and has to live on his own in a caravan - Mrs Midas only recognises him through objects– Mrs Midas)