lettersfromgrace's reviews
91 reviews

Carol Ann Duffy can be accredited with writing the poem which was the first poem I felt I truly connected with and understood, ‘Havisham’, from that and her ‘Stealing’, she became the poet I turned to when at 14 I wanted to learn more about modern poetics. ‘Feminine Gospels’ and ‘The World’s Wife’ were there for me in all of my teenage angst, and alongside finding Plath and discovering confessional poetry, Duffy was vital towards helping me to realise that poetry is fundamentally a great way to channel and use one’s emotions for something good. Later at 15, I read ‘Rapture’, which allowed me to recognise the sapphic sentiments I was feeling. All in all, Duffy has been an incredibly significant poet within my life, and getting to reread and revisit some of my old favourites, like ‘Warming Her Pearls’ and ‘The Laughter of Stafford Girls High’ was so enjoyable and nostalgic. It brought me back to myself and allowed me to reflect upon how I have grown as a person since I first read Duffy in how these poems have changed in my perception too. I will be forever grateful to have existed in a world where her poetry found me. 

Carol Ann Duffy manages to keep the childlike magic of Christmas alive whilst acknowledging that children are not naïve to the celebrity worship, the class stratification, the poverty, and faithlessness of the world they live in; her success in doing this makes all her social commentary more potent and charges her poem with the beauty of belief and hope that all deserve a happy Christmas, and all a good night. 

It amazes me how Duffy can tell a tale poetically that is both as whimsical and full of merriment as to appeal to a child, but in addition cast it with such profundity, citing the mute-dead, the stag, the cry of a baby, blood in a priest’s wine, the cloaked poet— references to Rossetti’s ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’. It’s beautiful work that proves what was already known, that Duffy is a poet laureate through and through. 

My favourites were ‘The Preludes’, two choruses from ‘The Rock’, ‘Journey of the Magi’. The conversion from the existentialism of ‘The Wasteland’ and ‘Prufrock’ to Eliot’s latter evangelical poems was intriguing, especially in terms of studying the development of his style. It was the perfect book to read following Golding’s ‘The Spire’. 

The nearness Eliot describes to his creator in birthing his daughter in ‘Marina’, is beautiful in its innocence and humility; the reflections upon life and death alongside being a believer in an atheist or misled world in ‘Journey of the Magi’ are incredibly profound and poignant; ‘The Preludes’ speak to so much of the futility one feels in the seemingly insignificant repetition of everyday life. There was this one section within ‘Prufrock’ of life being measured by coffee spoons that struck me, the feeling that continuing to eat or drink is pointless is one that regularly occurs to me on my period, so this resonated personally.

Eliot’s masterpiece, ‘The Wasteland’ was gorgeously modernist, and I have been so intrigued as to what modernist poetry would look like compared to the modernist poetry I so adore. It is certainly a style I like, and I would love to learn to be able to adopt it for my own purposes.

the deep symbolism of this novel gave it such profundity; its ending was perfection— maybe it is that i am rereading hamlet once more, but baldwin’s reflections on how we leave this ‘dirty body’, and the strength we are given by waiting for the hand of god felt to me almost a suicidal anticlimax— you want david to live rather than just survive, you hope he will. the discussions baldwin prompts about sexuality, what it is to be a woman, what freedom is, what nationality is, are all handled beautifully and with such touching brevity. his abilities of description and his use of repeated motifs are just gorgeous. i hope to read more of him. it is also interesting to consider as complying to the traditional tragic form, especially within a shakespearian context.

a gorgeous existential reflection that speaks of the meaninglessness of purpose given, only the meaning of the life that passes, seen by one, like a kingfisher or an apple tree, a beatitude in its joy and its terror; life is madness, folly, but we live— and like jocelin we may become martyrs. 

plath is perfection, as always.

the sequence at the very end is a beautifully written and poignant reflection on her first suicide attempt and how symbolic it became for her. 

the shadow of grief, of her father, fathomless and in black, marrying her to shadow, of the disquieting muses that surrounded her from birth, of the mother of otherness, is ever present within this poetry collection, but so too is hope, rebirth, light, and love. 

in that aspect, it is very much ariel’s older sister: wise and experienced, ready to console. 

it was interesting to compare the voice of ‘the colossus’ to the voice plath employs in ‘ariel’, as they are so distinct, but bloom from each other still; a natural metamorphosis. 

in addition, i found this volume to be much more akin to lowell’s ‘life studies’ and traditionally confessional in style than ‘ariel’, and so that helped me to see what it is that makes a poem plathian, that distinguishes her. it is that juxtaposition between winter and the spring to come, i think. 

his darkest play, most definitely— not even necessarily in the strength of its tragic action, for it is all futile, but because of that, the meaninglessness of life; even the images shakespeare creates, of ophelia in her lake, free at last from control, are of life, which shall soon become like yorick’s skull indistinguishable from all else, as death reaches and corrupts it, or makes it in its all reaching equality. 

hamlet as a character resonated with me deeply, his nature, his delay, living in his classical allusions and the written word— deeply concerned with introspection and expectation of him, in love with life, mad for it, but aware of its meaningless; cloaked in back, aware of a danger within him.

Adored.

My favourite play by Shakespeare.