Carol Ann Duffy

by Deryn Rees-Jones

A volume in the Writers and Their Work series, which draws upon recent thinking in English studies to introduce writers and their contexts. Each volume includes biographical material, an examination of recent criticism, a bibliography and a reappraisal of a major work by the writer.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Rees-Jones is an Anglo-Welsh poet and professor of poetry at the University of Liverpool. She has a PhD from Birkbeck where she studied women poets. She has published four volumes of poetry. 'Burying the Wren' was a TLS Book of the Year and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Reviews

[Ben Moore · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some very interesting and helpful academic analysis which gets lost in a muddle of Freudian weirdness and overly academic language which has become a real hobby horse of mine recently.

On the one hand we have the great insight into how Duffy rejects being labelled as, for example, a 'woman poet' or 'feminist poet' along with any other labels, meaning that she can explore different themes in her poems without being boxed in to one category or genre.

On the other hand, you have sentences like this:

'While there is an impulse towards realism running throughout Duffy's work, her early interest in the Romantics and her journey through Modernist and Surrealist practices have culminated in an aesthetic which seeks to problematize notions of truth and the desire to mediate an 'authentic' experience while relentlessly searching for new ways in which to explore and examine them.'

A 58 word sentence, which could have been so much shorter and more accessible. 'Problematize'? Give over.

Or there's the bit where the author writes: 'As a poem which is so obviously about coupling (that is the physical union of two separate bodies)...' Did she forget the word sex?

All the weird, Freudian over-analysis also distracts massively from the good bits.

I've worked in academia long enough now to:

a) know how to translate this kind of overly-academic waffling, so I can at least understand what the author's saying

b) know that it's often (as in this case) completely unnecessary, and therefore lose all patience with it. All of this could have been written in much simpler language, without losing any of the meaning. But then again, there's only 49 pages of content here as it is. Perhaps it needed to be bulked out, like a first year undergraduate student's assignment, to avoid becoming a four page essay.

[Bethany Dark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable and accessible read, with some interesting insights into Duffy's poetry. Rees-Jones' reading of ‘Oppenheim’s Cup and Saucer’ was superb, and it was a real shame that she didn't complete this kind of in-depth contextual analysis on other poems. I also felt that the analysis in each chapter could have been woven into an argument more fluidly.

Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile read for those interested in an academic look at Duffy's poetry.