Rapture

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These works are also her most formal - following in the tradition of Shakespeare and John Donne, Duffy’s contemporary love poems in this collection draw on the traditional sonnet and ballad forms." the poems are rich, beautiful and heart-rending in their exploration of the deepest recesses of human emotion, both joy and pain. " An extended rhapsody on a love affair, ushering the reader from first spark to full flame to final, messy The poem is divided into two stanzas, with the first describing the fleeting nature of time, and the second focusing on the speaker's desire to hold on to the present moment.

This is quite skilfully done as the narrator uses the word assonance to prove their point but also uses assonance in the line. Clever stuff! I think what is trying to be said here is that they try and break with the norm to attain bliss, but up until this point it doesn’t seem to have been working! Throughout the poem, there are a number of words that reference the physical body. These include “flesh,”“bones”“fingers,”“skull” and “blood.” While Duffy’s speaker might be romanticizing the physical parts of her relationship, she accepts what death will bring. She understands fully that every physical piece of her lover’s body, and her own body, will eventually be reduced to “brittle things.” The poem continues, focusing purely on how love is able to oppose time between lines five and ten, thus underpinning the importance of the theme of time in the poem, as it is present throughout.I offer no resistance. I surrender to extravagant poetry and the stormy powers of love and sex, and leap into the element of which we are composed, and use every muscle in our souls to stay afloat within. From “River”: As we celebrate Carol Ann Duffy’s decade as Poet Laureate, Dr Mari Hughes-Edwards offers a response to the themes of love and loss in her work What Will You Do Now with the Gift of Your Life? by Stephen Raw.

Clearly, there is a massive transformation and the tone of the poem has changed dramatically. It is at this point in the poem we start to understand why it is called the rapture. Speaking of which note once again the reference to heaven. Sean O’Brien, ‘Carol Ann Duffy: a stranger here myself’ in The Deregulated Muse (Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 1998) This is the third poem in Duffy’s collection entltled Rapture. Of the fifty-two poems eighteen are sonnets. The sonnet template is favoured by poets for serious subjects, including love. Duffy traces the progress of a love affair, with all its fluctuations, joys and heartache. The word “Rapture” originally referred to the state of being, at the time of death, when a soul reached heaven and eternity in the presence of God. This ultimately came to mean extreme pleasure, earthly as well as religious. Duffy uses a beautiful description here referring to the clouds as a prayer of rain. This is a nice nod to the poem’s religious title and actually in itself is quite a clever collective noun for clouds. The end of the line is enjambment and this helps the pace of the poem, although it is an enjambment line it does not dismiss the rhyming pattern.They further go on to explain the strong emotions that love makes them feel. The image of a tiger, ready to kill is particularly striking. The narrator uses powerful words to convey a dark undertone to the poem. In this third line you can see the words “kill”, “flame” and “fierce” none of these would be readily associated with love, but have a stronger association with lust and desire. The stanza is rounded off by the narrator talking about how their loved one entered their life. How they strolled in. This, at least for me, created an image of somebody with nonchalance and arrogance. I would love to know who she is so I could fall in love with her. Swim in oceanic waves of desire. Actually, I know her name and I am in love with her: Poetry. This is Duffy at her most serious - the poems are rich, beautiful and heart-rending in their exploration of the deepest recesses of human emotion, both joy and pain. These works are also her most formal - following in the tradition of Shakespeare and John Donne, Duffy’s contemporary love poems in this collection draw on the traditional sonnet and ballad forms.