#carol ann duffy

[flowerytale]

Carol Ann Duffy, from "December"; Rapture

[petaltexturedskies]

I love your name. I pray it into the night till its letters are light.

Carol Ann Duffy, from"Name" in Rapture

[apoemaday]

Eurydice

by Carol Ann Duffy

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground.

So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard -- Ye Gods -- a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door.

Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize.

Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears.

Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc.

In fact girls, I’d rather be dead.

But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal.

Orpheus strutted his stuff.

The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears.

Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life -- Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife -- to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths…

He’d been told that he mustn’t look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He’d been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever.

So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked.

Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this -- I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date… I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey.

It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke -- Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again…

He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me.

What else? I noticed he hadn’t shaved. I waved once and was gone.

The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

[derangedrhythms]

I have called your name over and over in my head 

Carol Ann Duffy, Selling Manhattan; from ‘Correspondents’

[alwaystuesday]

This really is one to click for better quality.

Zooms on image and full poem by Carol Ann Duffy under the cut

Inprnt | kofi

Rain Carol Ann Duffy

Not so hot as this for a hundred years. You were where I was going. I was in tears. I surrendered my heart to the judgement of my peers.

A century’s heat in the garden, fierce as love. You returned on the day I had to leave. I mimed the full, rich, busy life I had to live.

Hotter than hell. I burned for you day and night; got bits of your body wrong, bits of it right, in the huge mouth of the dark, in the bite of the light.

I planted a rose, burnt orange, the colour of flame, gave it the last of the water, gave it your name. It flared back at the sun in a perfect rhyme.

Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first on the back of my neck. I unfurled my fist for the rain to caress with its lips. I turned up my face,

and water flooded my mouth, baptised my head, and the rainclouds gathered like midnight overhead, and the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.

[solar-settings]

from physics, by carol ann duffy // jackie and shauna, yellowjackets

[metamorphesque]

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables like a charm, like a spell.

You, Carol Ann Duffy

[my4ththerapist]

nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING will get me as riled up as religious symbolism

[hangsawoman]

girlfriends by carol ann duffy

[docity]

interview with the vampire season 2, louis & lestat / carol ann duffy, hand

[enlitment]

N°2 for the book asks

Thanks for the ask kind anon and sorry for taking forever to answer! (this one was not easy!)

Top 5 books of all time?

In no particular order:

1. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Set in an interesting historical period (Canada in the 1800s) + partially based on real events + focuses on women's issues + from a female perspective + includes complex, morally grey characters + unreliable narrator trope + criminal (sub)plot + weird historical psychoanalysis & psychiatry + some really great writing. Need I say more?

(Also the show is actually really good as well, if you don't feel like reading the book!)

2. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I mean, it's a classic for a reason. Gay yearning. Corruption. Murder. Beautiful descriptive prose. But hey, this is Tumblr, so I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here.

(Still need to get my hands on the uncensored version at some point!)

3. The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

I've reread this one more times than I can count. Duffy draws on the classics (mostly Greek mythology, but also fairy tale characters and even Faust) but reimagines them through a more contemporary, as well as female perspective. That could go wrong really easily, but this book in fact does a stellar job in my opinion.

Just read Eurydice, my favourite (I don't think I've ever felt quite as represented by a poem before). Or Medusa. Or Pygmalion's Bride.

Or, you know, and poem that is not Mrs. Tiresias - I like to pretend that one is not there.

4. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Very much my teenage obsession. It's a gripping read written from the point of view of a teenage criminal that speaks in a strange mix of English and Russian that is at first barely coherent. It's raw, it's brutal, but it also asks some very interesting questions about the nature of morality and free will in a way that does not feel forced.

Oh, and the movie's great as well. Possibly the best soundtrack of all time. So good and so problematic that it's been banned in the UK until the 2000s.

5. The Great Cat Massacre (and Other Episodes in French Cultural History) by Robert Darnton

A collection of essays focusing on the microhistory of 18th century France? It's a real mystery why I like it so much, huh.

It's actually a bit insane how much I owe to this book. It arguably helped to spark my Rousseau and Diderot (and, in general, enlightenment era) obsession. I also sneakily reapplied Darnton's argument to justify my thesis (it's totally necessary to study 18th-century mental health approaches, give me all the funds now, please! /s).

Darnton is not only a hilarious author, but you also get a sense that he truly cares about the people he writes about. If you get your hands on it, I recommend reading chapter 4 (includes police description of the key enlightenment figures, like V, Rousseau, and Diderot!) or chapter 6 (the Rousseau stan culture analysis).

Maybe skip the titular chapter, especially if you are fond of cats. I'm afraid the name is, in this case, quite literal.

[mythologyofblue]

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way. -Carol Ann Duffy

[petaltexturedskies]

Carol Ann Duffy, from "Presents" in Rapture

[poupeelait]

carol ann duffy, medusa // eiichi yamamoto, belladonna of sadness // frederick sandys, love's shadow // sylvia plath, lady lazarus // tinto brass, the howl // ethel cain, ptolomea

[derangedrhythms]

dreaming you hard, hard,

Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture; from ‘You’ 

[apoemaday]

Forest

by Carol Ann Duffy

In fact, the trees are murmuring under your feet, a buried empathy; you tread it.                                                  High over your head, the canopy sieves light; a conversation you lip-read. The forest                                       keeps different time; slow hours as long as your life, so you feel human. So you feel more human; persuaded what you are by wordless breath of wood, reason in resin. You might name them--                                     oak, ash, holly, beech, elm-- but the giants are silence alive, superior, and now you are all instinct; swinging the small lamp of your heart as you venture their world: the green, shadowy, garlic air                                                 your ancestors breathed. Ah, you thought love human till you lost yourself in the forest, but it is more strange.                                    These grave and patient saints who pray and pray and suffer your little embrace.