Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy won the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize (one of the most prestigious in the UK) last month. I’ve read a fair amount of her stuff recently, and this is my current favorite. The last stanza is devastatingly good, of course, but the build-up is excellent as well.
Crush
The older she gets,
the more she awakes
with somebody’s face strewn in her head
like petals which once made a flower.
What everyone does
is sit by a desk
and stare at the view, till the time
where they live reappears. Mostly in words.
Imagine a girl
turning to see
love stand by a window, taller,
clever, anointed with sudden light.
Yes, like an angel then,
to be truthful now.
At first a secret, erotic, mute;
today a language she cannot recall.
And we’re all owed joy,
sooner or later.
The trick’s to remember whenever
it was, or to see it coming.
Duffy is wonderful. Hugo, you would probably love her earlier book “The World’s Wife” in which each poem is a feminist twist on a the story of a famous historical or mythical male figure – e.g. Orpheus, Freud, the Beast from “Beauty & the Beast”.
Thanks for the recommendation, Jendi — I haven’t read it. Is it like Sexton’s “Transformations”, the feminist re-telling of classic fairy tales?
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can anyone analyse this poem for me?
i really need help understanding this + “first love” for my english course.
thank you.