The Unusualness of Carol Anne Duffy's Poetry
Carol Anne Duffy's poetry like quite a lot of modern poetry is not traditionally written. It does not rhyme and punctuation differs from how it would have been traditionally written. Also sentences do not start and end in orthodox places for example; in 'Valentine' sentences cross lines :-
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
This crossing of lines and paragraphs is more prominent in some other modern poetry and is not demonstrated particularly well in this set of poems.
The poems are odd in other ways. The titles of the poems are not remarkable in themselves but when you start to read the poems it becomes apparent that they are not written conventionally. The poet has used many abstract ideas in the poems. This is most noticeable in 'Valentine'. It starts off oddly with the line "Not a red rose or a satin heart." This is very untraditional as it is a blunt, forthright statement. The phrase is a stereotypical cliche of what most people imagine Valentines Day to be about. Duffy then proceeds to shred the cliche to pieces with her next line. "I give you an onion." This is very contrasting to the first statement because it is about as far as you can get from a romantic image.
While 'Valentine' is perhaps the most bizarre of her poems the others 'War Photographer', 'Stealing', 'Before You Were Mine' and 'In Mrs Tilscher's Class' are all definitely out of the ordinary.
Whereas 'Valentine' was weird 'n' wacky 'In Mrs Tilscher's Class' is actually very clever. The idea of the school year very ingeniously encompasses the aspect, albeit an abstract one, of growing up. It starts with the beginning of the school year, and this signifies the
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