Essay on Carol Ann Duffy and Liz Lochhead Explore Memories

In the opening, she shares her childhood encounters with women in prose with the children’s rhyme “a little girl who had a curl”. This personal anecdote introduces the topic of the portrayal of women in literature, as well as establishes a connection with her audience.

This is achieved in both poems through the use of a third person narrator. Again in both poems the narrator again is in the position of observing events. Bothe Dawe and Harwood use words like ‘his’, ‘she’, and ‘they’ this places the reader at a distance to the characters which creates the feeling that you have a greater knowledge overall than if it would forwardly just depict a single scene. Harwood uses present tense ‘ allowing the audience to make inferences on the past and future of the mother and her children. Dawe takes a different approach to this making the poem future tense implying that what is going on in the poem happens constantly and can now be predicted. Harwood also makes use of past tense ‘she loved once’ but reverts back to present tense ‘too late’ adding melancholy to the poem. Both poets effectively convey emotions experienced by people living on Australian land through the use of narrative

In a literary criticism written by Bobby Fong, which addresses the opposing possibilities of abuse and horse play of this poem, is quickly snuffed out when Fong states that most students regard the poem as a happy tale of a tipsy father playing with his child. Fong then writes how the same students said some of the finest moments with their fathers were when their fathers’ were drinking, and how “This “papa” was not the man they knew, so there was some anxiety felt regarding the “stranger,” but he was what these students as children wanted more often from their fathers.” (Fong) There is a reference to this uneasiness or anxiety in Roethke’s poem in line three which says “But I hung on like death:” (Roethke). However, despite the rough housing what the boy enjoyed the most was his father’s unhinged wild side, and that he was included in it.

In the poem, the mother takes her daughter to a pool party composed of boys. The speaker watches the children dive into the pool and imagines her daughter working math problems to calculate the gallons of water. As she watches the young girl climb out of the pool in her hamburger and french fry print swimming suit, she notes that the other young girls are looking at the boys, and as well as her daughter, she is beginning to recognize the appeal of their masculinity. The language of the poem is associated with the childness of the young girl. The description the speaker gives of the girl leads the reader to believe she is a child. She calls her “my girl,” and describes her of having a sweet face and a sleek ponytail. “She will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will see her sweet face” (1115), the diction of Olds word choice demonstrates the innocence of a young child beginning to approach maturity. She provides detailed portrayal of the character to provide the reader with an image of the diminishing childhood innocence of the

In the first stanza Duffy uses the technique of asyndetic listing of all the potential suitors that the monarch could have married like the "lord, the baronet, the count", instead she has accepted "Time for a husband". Duffy personifies "Time" as she gives it a capital letter resembling a name, it also embodies how the queen left it too late to marry, instead married her people and gave up seeking to find a husband. Another interpretation could be the historical context of the poem which could be an allusion to Queen Elizabeth the 1st This is evident in the name of the poem "the long queen" as queen Elizabeth is notorious for possessing a "Long" reign. She was perceived to be the 'virgin queen ' and was to have not married because of infertility. This suffering is a central aspect of some female lives and could be empathised by Duffy to make it universal. In 'the map women ' relationships inevitably fail because of her "map" signifying her past. when the women do have a relationship the lover 's maps "flapped in the breeze" which could portray that she is hard to read. The structure of the sentence also end stop, suggesting that companionship for the women is difficult due to her past. Duffy also describes the lovers as

In the book “The Memory Keeper's Daughter” by Kim Edwards a doctor and his wife have twins and the first child is a healthy boy but then the second child that comes out is a little girl with the signs of down syndrome and he asks his Nurse to take the baby away to an institution while he tells his wife the baby girl died. Through out the entire book it is a struggle for Dr. Henry's wife Norah to have closure with the fact that her baby girl is said to be dead and she never saw her, held her, or cared for her. Kim Edwards shows through the whole book that we are only human, the themes that life is beyond our control and through the connection between suffering and joy.

Memory is used as a powerful conduit into the past; childhood experiences held in the subconscious illuminate an adult’s perception. Harwood uses tense shifts throughout her poetry to emphasise and indicate the interweaving and connection the past and the present hold. By allowing this examination of the childhood memories, Harwood identifies that their significance is that of an everlasting memory that will dominate over time’s continuity and the inevitability of death.

In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.

In addition to the extreme limitations of their daily routine, both characters in MacLeod’s and Gilman’s short stories are subject to their significantly overbearing and oppressive spouses. The domineering management of their lives compels these characters to engage in either reading or writing, as an act of defiance towards their authority wielding partners. This minor form of rebellion allows the characters to feel as though they have at least some aspect of control over their lives. The father in MacLeod’s story is aware of his wife’s aversion to and disapproval of reading; however, this antagonism does not deter him from spending all his minimally free-time devouring books in his room. The narrator notes that his mother “despised the room and all it stood for,” yet his father remained inside it every night while “the goose-necked lamp illuminated the pages in his hands,” in an act of passive-aggressive opposition towards his wife’s

The young man in the poem loses his identity as he develops into the ruthless world of adulthood with its dehumanizing competition of ‘money-hungry, back-stabbing’ and ‘so-and-so.’ These exaggerated words and clichés

How do the poets use fictional and historical characters to explore human relationships and the human psyche in ‘Kid’ by Simon Armitage and ‘Salome’ by Carol Ann Duffy?

In stanza one Duffy depicts a conventional, middle class domestic setting; where the speaker, Mrs Midas is cooking vegetables and begins to “unwind” with a “glass of wine”. The quote, “glass of wine” emphasises the middle class, suburban setting and highlights revisionist element of the poem. Duffy writes stanzas one retrospectively, “It was late September”. Duffy uses this quote to set the scene but more importantly to indicate the fact that the event has already happened. This conveys the idea that the poem is being told as a story. In stanza one Duffy personifies the kitchen, with the line, “its steamy breath gently blanching the windows”. The quote emphasises that the kitchen is coming to life. Also the use of the simile, “like a brow” helps to convey the kitchen as a living thing. The word “gently” is used by Duffy to contrast the frenzied events which unfold later on in the poem. Furthermore,

Plath starts her poem out negatively, ‘barely daring to breathe or Achoo’, with a distinct repetition of the ‘oo’ sounds in ‘Achoo’, ‘do’, ‘shoe’ and ‘du’ creating a childlike, nursery rhyme style of delivery that contrasts greatly with the violent and dark themes. Harwood begins on a significantly more positive if wistful note, ‘forgive me the wisdom I would not learn from you’ positioning her mother as a wise and positive influence. The tones of the poems are very different, as shaped by the poet’s experiences with their parents, with Harwood creating an affirmative, loving description of her relationship with her mother while Plath develops a much darker and sinister view s.

In Galway Kinnell’s poem “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” Kinnell writes about the love between a parent and child.

‘The World’s Wife’ is a collection of poems by Carol Anne Duffy published in 1999. Throughout Duffy’s collection of the poems she represents women from history, myths and fairy tales, particularly those whose stories tend to be defined by men, or who have only a cameo appearance in male-dominated scenarios. ‘The Worlds Wife’ collection explores the themes of sexism, inequality and stereotypes, which women, sadly still face in modern society. In Duffy’s collection some poems look at the story of the man from a woman’s perspective, such as the poem ‘Mrs Aesop’. Other poem’s stories have been slightly altered like ‘The Kray Sisters.’ As we already know the Kray Twins are two male English gangsters from the East End of London during the