Kyra Smith wrestles with Carol Ann Duffy. Woof Woof.
I used to have a shagpile. Not a carpet, you understand, but a collection of poetry books tumbled oh-so-haphazardly on my bedside table that would indicate my sensitivity and depth to any pretty young thing I happened to coax home with me. Thankfully, I'm less of an idiot these days but if I still had my shagpile Carol Ann Duffy's latest collection, Rapture, would be on there. Enrobed in blush-pink velveteen and swirled in silver writing, it even looks the part.
Rapture is a book of love poems, or rather a love story in poems. It's occasionally rather good but it doesn't do anything for me. And unfortunately that perfectly encapsulates everything that is difficult about poetry, and everything that is futile about trying to review it. It's all very well to be able to recognise what is admirable about a poem but if it doesn't make you feel anything, then you might as well just be re-sitting your GCSEs. Perhaps this is a limited and childish way to respond to poetry but now that I have left the painful world of close critical readings far behind me the only standard of merit remaining is the entirely subjective matter of my personal enjoyment. This is not to say that I did not enjoy Rapture, but I found very little to truly inspire me in this prettily presented collection.
I think part of the problem lies in my perception of, and responses to, free verse. It was my education that ruined it for me (assuming there was anything there to ruin) not because of the teaching but because it seems to be generally assumed that adolescents will take one look at a sonnet or a ballad and die on the spot. Whereas, obviously, being confronted by a formless mass of words will inspire them with a deep and enduring love of poetry. We did UA Fanthorpe (from the bargain basement bin of lesbian poets r us) and I still bear the scars. But the point is that, although its words may be more direct, free verse is not necessarily easier. As Robert Frost said: "Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down." In which case reading the stuff is like watching somebody play tennis without the ball. The apparently "formless" nature demands a concentration on form that borders on obsession, as one blunders hopelessly through a tangle of internal rhyme, complicated metric patterning and whatever-the-technical-term-is for when you leave bits of blank space in funny places. With the more traditional poetic forms, I find it easier to be swept away by the perfect harmony between form and meaning, or engage with the tension between the two. With free verse, unless it's particularly brilliant, you'll find me frowning over why the eighth line is in amphibrachic tetrameter and if that's meant to mean anything to me.
All of which may, perhaps, indicate why my favourite poem in Rapture is a sonnet ("Hour" in case you care) and the rest strike me as accomplished but insipid. I think the problem may be that Rapture is clearly (and despite mutterings to the contrary) a set of poems to, at and inspired by a single person and yet Duffy chooses to universalise them to such an extent that they are no longer a document of a personal obsession but something that is supposed to give a voice and shape to collective experiences and emotions. The poems fold in upon themselves, returning to similar themes and images, most of which are drawn from the natural world (the moon, the stars, the garden, trees), even the titles of the poems are general rather than specific ("you" "rain" "grief"); and these techniques, designed to emphasise the timelessness and familiarity of her themes, only seem to reinforce the problems of this collection - attempting to speak for everyone tends to leave you speaking for no-one. Perhaps it is my contrary nature but most of the ideas Duffy explores the elasticity of time spent with a lover, the pain of parting, the ascendancy of the mobile phone to the status of relic - are so everyday to most lovers that they barely require expression. And even if they did I don't need Carol Ann Duffy to clothe my heart in pretty words for me; I'd be more engaged in her poems if they contained something of her own heart.
"Tea" is a good example of this. In it, the poet reflects (or perhaps more accurately insists) on the profound details of the making-tea-for-the-lover ritual. But since she offers nothing specific about it beyond a few bland, generic details ("I like pouring your tea, lifting / the heavy pot") the significance is hard to appreciate. The poem has clearly been inspired by something personal, yet the attempt to make it a universal exploration of the tea ritual entirely blots out the intimacy and emotion that would make someone want to write a poem about it in the first place. To say nothing of read about it. I found the most interesting parts of this collection the flashes of Duffy's elusive lover, since these at least have a ring of emotional authenticity, and showcase the fascinating mixture of complexity and directness that characterises Duffy's use of language. Even in the first poem, "You", the admiration for the careless glamour of the lover who "strolled in" to the poet's ordinary life is tinged with the bitter knowledge that the lover will stroll out again with equal nonchalance. Again, in Treasure, the "silver smile" and the "jackpot laugh" capture a sense of surface beauty and emotional hollowness, of imminent disappointment as well as temporary joy. Gifts', with its reference to fashionable hats and little black dresses, creates a lover focused on the materialistic and the fleeting compared to the poet who dwells in the natural world and offers us her heart and soul and mind as stylish trinkets. Sadly such flashes of truth are few and far between.
Strangely enough, Rapture puts me in mind of Birthday Letters, not because they are in any way similar but because Birthday Letters is everything that Rapture fails to be. I'm not really a fan of Hughes but I had quite a strong response to Birthday Letters. I've never tried unravel the truth of it and I'm certain there's an element of retrospective reinvention going on there but, nevertheless, the emotional intensity of it is very real and very raw indeed. By turns tender, anxious, bitter, urgent and full of pain, there is never any attempt to make the poems accessible or general in scope. They remain very personal, somewhat obscure and yet utterly compelling:
Rapture is an infinitely less demanding experience, although you can still find within it much of what makes Duffy a great poet. There are many memorable and striking images ("the parched, crouched heart / like a tiger ready to kill" "You") to be found; some neat little conceits ("Text" is a beautifully simple poem, just long enough to be texted, "Quickdraw", another telephone themed poem, almost works but the power of it is slightly banked by an over-dependence on the original conceit); some interesting juxtapositions between the natural world of their love and the outside world of technology and little black dresses ("the train rushes ecstatic / to where you are / my bright star "December") and trite romantic ideas are often presented in such a way as to make them interesting again ("I burned for you day and night / Got bits of your body wrong, bits of it right / In the huge mouth of the dark, in the bite of the light" Rain).
Unfortunately, perhaps because of the poet's decision to present something that could speak for all of us instead of concentrating on speaking for herself, Rapture still fails to build up any real power; a collection less than the sum of its parts.
Rapture is a book of love poems, or rather a love story in poems. It's occasionally rather good but it doesn't do anything for me. And unfortunately that perfectly encapsulates everything that is difficult about poetry, and everything that is futile about trying to review it. It's all very well to be able to recognise what is admirable about a poem but if it doesn't make you feel anything, then you might as well just be re-sitting your GCSEs. Perhaps this is a limited and childish way to respond to poetry but now that I have left the painful world of close critical readings far behind me the only standard of merit remaining is the entirely subjective matter of my personal enjoyment. This is not to say that I did not enjoy Rapture, but I found very little to truly inspire me in this prettily presented collection.
I think part of the problem lies in my perception of, and responses to, free verse. It was my education that ruined it for me (assuming there was anything there to ruin) not because of the teaching but because it seems to be generally assumed that adolescents will take one look at a sonnet or a ballad and die on the spot. Whereas, obviously, being confronted by a formless mass of words will inspire them with a deep and enduring love of poetry. We did UA Fanthorpe (from the bargain basement bin of lesbian poets r us) and I still bear the scars. But the point is that, although its words may be more direct, free verse is not necessarily easier. As Robert Frost said: "Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down." In which case reading the stuff is like watching somebody play tennis without the ball. The apparently "formless" nature demands a concentration on form that borders on obsession, as one blunders hopelessly through a tangle of internal rhyme, complicated metric patterning and whatever-the-technical-term-is for when you leave bits of blank space in funny places. With the more traditional poetic forms, I find it easier to be swept away by the perfect harmony between form and meaning, or engage with the tension between the two. With free verse, unless it's particularly brilliant, you'll find me frowning over why the eighth line is in amphibrachic tetrameter and if that's meant to mean anything to me.
All of which may, perhaps, indicate why my favourite poem in Rapture is a sonnet ("Hour" in case you care) and the rest strike me as accomplished but insipid. I think the problem may be that Rapture is clearly (and despite mutterings to the contrary) a set of poems to, at and inspired by a single person and yet Duffy chooses to universalise them to such an extent that they are no longer a document of a personal obsession but something that is supposed to give a voice and shape to collective experiences and emotions. The poems fold in upon themselves, returning to similar themes and images, most of which are drawn from the natural world (the moon, the stars, the garden, trees), even the titles of the poems are general rather than specific ("you" "rain" "grief"); and these techniques, designed to emphasise the timelessness and familiarity of her themes, only seem to reinforce the problems of this collection - attempting to speak for everyone tends to leave you speaking for no-one. Perhaps it is my contrary nature but most of the ideas Duffy explores the elasticity of time spent with a lover, the pain of parting, the ascendancy of the mobile phone to the status of relic - are so everyday to most lovers that they barely require expression. And even if they did I don't need Carol Ann Duffy to clothe my heart in pretty words for me; I'd be more engaged in her poems if they contained something of her own heart.
"Tea" is a good example of this. In it, the poet reflects (or perhaps more accurately insists) on the profound details of the making-tea-for-the-lover ritual. But since she offers nothing specific about it beyond a few bland, generic details ("I like pouring your tea, lifting / the heavy pot") the significance is hard to appreciate. The poem has clearly been inspired by something personal, yet the attempt to make it a universal exploration of the tea ritual entirely blots out the intimacy and emotion that would make someone want to write a poem about it in the first place. To say nothing of read about it. I found the most interesting parts of this collection the flashes of Duffy's elusive lover, since these at least have a ring of emotional authenticity, and showcase the fascinating mixture of complexity and directness that characterises Duffy's use of language. Even in the first poem, "You", the admiration for the careless glamour of the lover who "strolled in" to the poet's ordinary life is tinged with the bitter knowledge that the lover will stroll out again with equal nonchalance. Again, in Treasure, the "silver smile" and the "jackpot laugh" capture a sense of surface beauty and emotional hollowness, of imminent disappointment as well as temporary joy. Gifts', with its reference to fashionable hats and little black dresses, creates a lover focused on the materialistic and the fleeting compared to the poet who dwells in the natural world and offers us her heart and soul and mind as stylish trinkets. Sadly such flashes of truth are few and far between.
Strangely enough, Rapture puts me in mind of Birthday Letters, not because they are in any way similar but because Birthday Letters is everything that Rapture fails to be. I'm not really a fan of Hughes but I had quite a strong response to Birthday Letters. I've never tried unravel the truth of it and I'm certain there's an element of retrospective reinvention going on there but, nevertheless, the emotional intensity of it is very real and very raw indeed. By turns tender, anxious, bitter, urgent and full of pain, there is never any attempt to make the poems accessible or general in scope. They remain very personal, somewhat obscure and yet utterly compelling:
Rapture is an infinitely less demanding experience, although you can still find within it much of what makes Duffy a great poet. There are many memorable and striking images ("the parched, crouched heart / like a tiger ready to kill" "You") to be found; some neat little conceits ("Text" is a beautifully simple poem, just long enough to be texted, "Quickdraw", another telephone themed poem, almost works but the power of it is slightly banked by an over-dependence on the original conceit); some interesting juxtapositions between the natural world of their love and the outside world of technology and little black dresses ("the train rushes ecstatic / to where you are / my bright star "December") and trite romantic ideas are often presented in such a way as to make them interesting again ("I burned for you day and night / Got bits of your body wrong, bits of it right / In the huge mouth of the dark, in the bite of the light" Rain).
Unfortunately, perhaps because of the poet's decision to present something that could speak for all of us instead of concentrating on speaking for herself, Rapture still fails to build up any real power; a collection less than the sum of its parts.
