duffy poems Flashcards
(92 cards)
FL: ‘Waking, with a dream of first love forming real words’
suggests a moment of half-consciousness,The voice of the poem: (first person) has had a dream of their first love —> ‘dream’ vs ‘real words’ dreams as way to recapture a memory and bring into reality/present. Dreams —> manipulate time as Past and present coexist and colliding, this love has a lasting impact—it lingers even beyond sleep, affecting waking thoughts. love and memory transcend time.
FL: ‘after a silence of years, into the pillow, and the power’
- Silence of years’ - The metaphor of silence conveys emotional repression, emptiness, the passage of time. ‘into the pillow’ -> muffling perhaps from embarrassment, intimacy of speaking into the pillow, divulging of emotion - a form of release. Suggests that first love still holds an overwhelming influence over the speaker, even after years of silence - enjambment - compelling power
FL: ‘to say it again to a garden shaking with light.’
capturing the visual surrounding her, she’s physically being moved by the emotion - . It implies that the emotion or the memory is so strong that it stirs the world/perception around/of the speaker
FL: ‘Old film’ -
nostalgia, idealise it, lasts and replayed and revisited - the persistent impact of first love, it takes time for the memory to be played yet never quite perfect - effects of time - speaker’s emotions might have changed or been distorted over time
fl: ‘And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely/the size of a tear’
symbolizing how memories and emotions can endure long after the actual experience has passed. The star’s death yet continued light mirrors the lasting influence of first love, although the love is dead/ gone it has the power to stir emotion still. vulnerability, and the pain of first love, which often carries both beauty and heartache.
FL: Unseen/ flowers suddenly pierce and sweeten the air.
unseen ~ subconscious nature of memory—the way certain emotions/ sensory experiences can unexpectedly trigger recollections of the past. Flowers - often associated with beauty, love, and ephemerality, reinforcing first love as something delicate, intense, and fleeting. Env seems to replicate the past and the senses associated. Past + present co-exist - omnipresent effects of first love. Synaesthesia - making the memory of first love feel almost physically intrusive/ invades the senses in an uncontrollable way ~ mirrors how love can engulf a person,
C: ‘with somebody’s face strewn in her head/like petals which once made a flower.’
scattered memories, disorientation, fragile, preserved memories - memories of a loved one linger in a fragmented or intrusive way. Enjambment: accumulation of memories. Flower - fragile
C: ‘and stare at the view, till the time/where they live reappears. Mostly in words.’
a moment of stillness and contemplation ~imply reflection, nostalgia, or even dissociation - Universal truth of people deliberately recapturing the past through day-dreaming - window a portal to past. ‘Mostly in words’ - auditory memories, soundtrack from the past. ‘Reappears’ - Plays with the fluidity of time and memory, attempting for emotions can be resurrected through deep thought or longing.
C: ‘clever, anointed with sudden light.’ -
The crush of the past is being enhanced. ‘Anointing’ - saintly status of the crush, ‘sudden light’ - holy light capturing key figures, deifying her crush - could imply an epiphany? captures the intoxicating, almost spiritual experience of being enamoured with someone
C: ‘At first a secret, erotic, mute;/today a language she cannot recall.’
Heavy punctuation —> intensity of the feelings, heightened emotions of a youthful crush - re-experienced and enjoyed, a secret kept to oneself - unspoken - initial intensity of desire ~ deeply personal and intimate. The same intensity and worshipping of an individual- cannot be recaptured exactly. Mute - inability to articulate feelings ~ overwhelming nature of emotions. The metaphor of love as a language suggests that the passion and intimacy that once felt so natural have now faded into something unrecognizable.
C: ‘The trick’s to remember whenever/it was, or to see it coming’
- Caveat to universality, love requires attention and vigilance. ‘Tricks’ a secret? a way to approach love, colloquial, the power of young love/infatuation
C: Duffy critic quote about triplet
SA: “Only there, the afternoons could suddenly pause”
pause’ - absence, the childish perspective of time dragging out eternally, emptiness ‘only there’ in Stafford - unique setting, also the childish narrow perception of the world, the Enjambment depicts the flowing of time into nothingness, void. Afternoons often symbolize a liminal state, much like childhood as a stage between infancy and adulthood.
SA: “an ice-cream van chimed and dwindled away.”
this can act as a symbol of childish, carefree innocence that is slowly slipping away, with the passage of time. Auditory image - mirroring the inevitable fading of childhood and innocence.
“I waved at windscreens,/ oddly hurt by the blurred waves back,”
waving at windscreens’ ~ attempt to connect with others, disconnected, impersonal responses ~ not a distinct image. Accelerated existence of the adult world. Attempt to pass time ‘Oddly hurt’ ~ childlike sensitivity - the deeper realization that the world is indifferent, freedom and the journey of the cars in comparison to her isolation.
SA: “at the edge of a small wood, lonely and thrilled/The green silence gulped once and swallowed me whole.”
crossing threshold ~ unknown ~ Excitement of the new discovery of the ‘small wood’ yet still isolated perhaps a fairytale setting connoting journey, adventure with threat lurking. ‘Silence gulped once and swallowed me whole’ - danger is lurking (Volta), threat, oppressive silence
SA: “living, purple root in his hand”
Grotesque use of natural imagery to rationalise this experience ~ childhood innocence and naive perspective,
SA: “his hoarse, frightful endearments”
Frightful endearments - an oxymoron, the complicated combination of exposure of the corrupted aspects of adult life, tainted perspective. sound imagery makes the moment feel visceral ~ real fear and vulnerability.
SA: “where children scattered and shrieked/and time fell from the sky like a red ball.”
The perspective has changed as she has experienced true fear, disruption, disorder and chaos. transition period ~ growing up, losing innocence, Colour imagery: the sun setting on childhood - dawn of another Era. Stagnation -> fall ~ irreversible change
Steam themes:
Constant looking back in time, despite the passage of time - perhaps reflecting the disorienting nature of steam.
Steam form and structure:
14 lines - to trigger an association with the sonnet, despite this poem being about a loss of this reality.
- The Enjambment throughout the poem is reaching for feeling tangible concrete memory and not the hazy recapturing of a memory
S: Not long ago so far, a lover and I/in a room of steam’
paradoxical, blending past and present. The use of “lover” rather than a name or “partner” adds a passionate and transient quality to the relationship. fairytale vibes - first persona, ‘room of steam’ - acting as a barrier presenting the shifting nature of the relationship over time, symbolises both physical warmth suggesting closeness and desire and ephemerality.
S: ‘a sly, thirsty, silvery word - lay down, opposite ends, and vanished.’
Sibilance to depict steam as a deceitful thing, implies something secretive or even seductive, private, intimate nature of the moment. Themes of passion and emotional intensity, perhaps reflecting the memories and their truthfulness. ‘Opposite ends and vanished’ - extmetaphor of steam shows the relationship is over, separation, trying to recapture a memory - exploration of impermanence, the moment is fleeting and dissolves into memory.
S:‘a nude pose in soft pencil/ behind tissue paper’ -
art imagery, trying to recapture a memory - impermanence of love, drawing is an interpretation reflecting the subjective nature of memory, memory is shaping and shifting to accommodate the persona. moment has been captured and preserved like a work of art.
