ipl-logo

Wish Carol Ann Duffy Analysis

836 Words4 Pages

‘Wish’ by Carol Ann Duffy is about wishing to resurrect a body. It presents death in rewind and undoes all the suffering that has to do with death. ‘Wish’ is a very personal poem compared to the other poems Carol Ann Duffy had written. However, although it is quite personal, it is also a mixture of being personal and connecting with the public, since it relates to the themes of mistreated women from earlier in her collection of poems. The ‘wish’ in this poem is to undo every suffering; to resurrect the dead, meaning to bring back someone who has been lost. It contains a total of fourteen lines, has half rhymes, has internal rhymes (‘bride/’died slept’/’wept’), and takes on the form of iambic pentameter. It is written like it is in a form of …show more content…

Carol Ann Duffy also uses sibilance in this poem, for example; ‘shifted, wish, stirred’. This represents the resurrection of a body and the movements of it. Looking at how Carol Ann Duffy uses short sentences, it seems like she is using an angry tone of voice, going on and on, for example; ‘Nobody died. Nobody wept. Nobody slept…’ as if she is emphasizing to the readers that the poor women are just like nobodies, (relating to the poem ‘Anon’ by Carol Ann Duffy from Feminine Gospels). The repetition of “nobody” makes a person lose their identity, whereas only the memory that others have of you will keep you alive. She writes ‘why do I shout, why do I run’ without a question mark. Is it a rhetorical question that Carol Ann Duffy is suggesting to herself and the readers? Feminine Gospels is a collection that puts a lot of emphasis on the question ‘why’. The verbs used in this poem that are written in past tense are related to the process of waking up, for example, ‘grew, shifted, stirred, reached, pulled’. The verb ‘walk’ written in present tense represents imagining the person being brought to life and actually walking like the

Show More
Related
906 Words | 4 Pages

In the poem The Century Quilt, by Marilyn Nelson Waniek, the speaker expresses the deeper meaning by presenting a story about a quilt that has been passed down through the family. She continues to look back and express her family history though the memories as well as the passing on of the quilt to future generations. The quilt contains multiple meanings such as, her heritage and identity and even the diversity within family. As an author, she knows that to get this message across, it requires more than a simple story or memory, but also provide detailed imagery in which the reader will gain an insight to how meaningful and impactful this quilt is. The intensity in which the speaker describes this undertaking and the appreciation she feels

Read More
1026 Words | 5 Pages

She makes certain that the tension that she created at the beginning of the poem by asking more rhetorical questions to the reader. By doing this, the reader is made to think about how to answer these questions, even though these questions are not meant to be answered; these questions that she asks are to highlight the irony of their behavior. The repetition of questions is a clever way to not loose the tension and unease that the poem is creating. This forces them to constantly critically reflect on the social expectations placed on

Read More
758 Words | 4 Pages

This type of sonnet is used by Shakespeare and contains the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The comfort and rhythmic effect of the rhyme scheme allows for an easier understanding of the emotions the narrator is trying to convey. The rhyming pattern that occurs at the end of the poem captures the entire meaning of the sonnet in its final two lines, “Such permanence is terrifying. / So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.”

Read More
920 Words | 4 Pages

Through the words reflecting melancholy and sorrow, we can sense the narrator's self destruction due to the death of the woman he loved. As one examines the figurative language of the poem, one finds that its form and

Read More
720 Words | 3 Pages

During this scene dramatic irony is noticed. Vera did not know that she was going to be the cause for the next death. By doing this we notice that she is carrying out the poem without even realizing she is. Many literacy terms are noticed during this; but also are noticed during an abandonment between the island and

Read More
762 Words | 4 Pages

The poem does not really have any kind of a rhyme scheme that I noticed. She is using personification to describe

Read More
610 Words | 3 Pages

By the fourth stanza it’s apparent that the separation the narrator has with these losses is a façade. There is an almost audible excitement when the narrator is reminded of her old homes. In fifth stanza the narrator is no longer offering advice, but reminiscing on her past life and some of the “realms” she has lost. The narrator is remiss but maintains that losing them didn’t cause a disaster.

Read More
520 Words | 3 Pages

The poem uses an ABAB end rhyme in every other line except for the third and the last stanzas. The third stanza is ABCB, with an internal rhyme with the words “…certainty of tides…like hopes springing

Read More
1470 Words | 6 Pages

On the very first line one may notice the parallelism between the two lorries and how this convey the reader a conflictive situation where confusion is primordial as well as the creation of a state of uncertainty by the use of a rhetorical question; “…but which lorry was it now?”. Moving on, on that same stanza, on line 4, the author brings the image of her mother again, representing her death, along with the parallel folding of coal-bags and body-bags accentuate the role of death in Irish

Read More
967 Words | 4 Pages

Shakespearean Sonnet: poem of 14 lines grouped into 3 quatrains and a couple with a rhyme scheme of abab.cdcd,efef,gg It was developed in England by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century as an adaptation of the Petrachan sonnet that had been imported from Italy and it reached its maturest expression in the sonnets of William

Read More
1212 Words | 5 Pages

In the end of the poem she finally answers her rhetorical question about what the dead feel and comes to the conclusion that even blessing them is useless, for they cannot hear when she says, “They refuse / to be blessed, throat eye, and knucklebone” (16). They have no voice so they cannot speak, they have no sight so they cannot see, and they have no touch so they cannot feel. Following the

Read More
867 Words | 4 Pages

Although it is written in one piece, syntactically and semantically, it can be divided into three stanzas of four verses. This corresponds with the rhyme scheme xaxa xbxb xcxc. The first two verses of each stanza are end-stopped, whereas the third and fourth verse are enjambed. The whole poem is structured as a logical argument with the two first stanzas presenting the premises in one sentence each and the third stanza deriving a conclusion. The conjunction “Wenn” is ambiguous in German, as it can introduce temporal, conditional or concessive clauses.

Read More
1068 Words | 5 Pages

This use of colloquial language informalizes the tone of the poem, and in doing so places the archaic figure of Salome in a contemporary setting, thus making her more relatable to a modern audience. The wit of the poem lends to establishing a portrait of Salome as a human being, rather than a mythologised figure of mystery, a muse for the Romantics. She is ‘hungover and wrecked’, and as is painfully real for many readers who’ve experienced hangovers, spending the morning after contemplating her life choices, telling herself to ‘get fitter / cut out the booze and the fags and the sex’. The poem is almost personalised in places, as the use of the Northern slang term alludes to Duffy’s Glaswegian roots, which suggests that Duffy envisions herself in this modern manifestation of Salome. This personal touch coupled with the casual language invites the reader to find parts of themselves in her too.

Read More
711 Words | 3 Pages

Inequality between social classes has been a problem for humanity since social organization exists. The texts “I Am The People, The Mob” by Carl Sandburg and “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats” by Nick Hanauer both address an issue about inequality, relevant for each’s author’s context. While “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats” expresses a point of view for higher class people and about a modern-day problem, “I Am The People, The Mob” describes a problem in a context of a century before and for a less wealthy class. Text C, “I Am The People, The Mob” is a poem written in 1916, for an audience of people that were not part of the higher social classes but were oppressed by them.

Read More
505 Words | 3 Pages

The whole poem is a single stanza of four, cross rhymed quatrains, ABAB. Furthermore every line has iambic pentameter; ten syllables complimented with five stressed and unstressed beats. This creates a steady and calm rhythm. Contrary to the poem’s topic of war. In only one line does he not use this; “And went outside and slashed with fury with it” this helps the reader understand his hatred towards war; the “nettles”.

Read More

More about Wish Carol Ann Duffy Analysis

Open Document