Carol Ann Duffy

Offers a selection of works from five of the poet's previously published volumes, including "Standing Female Nude," "The Other Country," and "Selling Manhattan."

Selected Poems

In New Selected Poems 1984-2004, Carol Ann Duffy draws together key poems from her published work to date spanning twenty extraordinary years of definitive writingfrom Standing Female Nude (1985) to Feminine Gospels (2003). Always vital, original and poignant, Carol Ann Duffy has been called the representative poet of our times. Her distinctive style incorporates witty acts of ventriloquism and imagination thatfearlessly and with sparkling lucidityaddress timeless and universal themes in ways both personal and political. In doing so, she speaks to our collective memory and establishes herself as a modern classic.

New Selected Poems

Gavin

I’d thought of her as sort of obvious – all first-order, meaning near the surface, all on worthy themes like childhood perversity and elderly loss. But her best (“Auden’s Alphabet”, “Shooting Stars”) see her wielding that obviousness well and having fun with drudgery. More historical pieces than I expected, too. Impression: ‘dissolving into childhood’, life as school forever, if school is undemonstrative alienation and uninteresting torment. 

The epic autobiographical “Laughter of Stafford Girls’ School” is good; the key to it is that after the anti-authoritarian lark, the poem follows home the prim teachers who failed to control the ruckus.

Thea

After a bit of a hit or miss situation in the first half, the last 50 or so pages really hit the spot for me