indian politics - rasthraPATHI even when female president not rasthraPATHNI

bc delivers different MSG

THE WORLD’S WIFE (1999)

was

Medusa
triple structure - negation - portray uncertainty
A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy
grew in my mind,
which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes,
as though my thoughts maintaining the negative medusa
imagery but adding her narrative voice
hissed and spat on my scalp.

alliteration sibilance
My bride’s breath soured, stank
transformation, foul words highlight how she is perceived by others
in the gray bags of my lungs.
I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued, because she is talking about smtg against society
values, questioning, stating her opinions
yellow fanged. hyperboles

There are bullet tears in my eyes.

Are you terrified?

Be terrified.
It’s you I love,
perfect man, Greek God, my own;
but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray
from home.
So better by far for me if you were stone.
all personal pronouns - repetition

I glanced at a buzzing bee,

* all domestic animals that are HARMLESS and TIMID
a dull grey pebble fell emphasizes her cruelness
to the ground.
the contrast in +ve verb and animal to the next line imagery sudden
I glanced at a singing bird, contrast and emphasizes cruelness, magnitude and power of her actions

a handful of dusty gravel spattered down.

I looked at a ginger cat,
a housebrick
shattered a bowl of milk.
I looked at a snuffling pig,
a boulder rolled
in a heap of shit. ends the imagery w smtg negative and disgusting - wants reader to feel grossed out

the intensity of the verbs are increasing

I stared in the mirror. glanced < looked < stared
Love gone bad
showed me a Gorgon. accepting the perception (after reflection) that she does look like a gorgon
* LOVE made me a gorgon
I stared at a dragon. rhyme
Fire spewed
volcano
from the mouth of a mountain.

And here you come

with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue
and your girls, your girls. highlighting mens' promscuity - debauchery - philandery
Wasn’t I beautiful? men inferring to are prone to younger women (problematic)

Wasn’t I fragrant and young?

Look at me now.
Mrs Sisyphus

That’s him pushing the stone up the hill, the jerk.

I call it a stone – it’s nearer the size of a kirk.
When he first started out, it just used to irk,
but now it incenses me, and him, the absolute berk.
I could do something vicious to him with a dirk.

Think of the perks, he says.

What use is a perk, I shriek,
when you haven’t the time to pop open a cork
or go for so much as a walk in the park?
He’s a dork.
Folk flock from miles around just to gawk.
They think it’s a quirk,
a bit of a lark.
A load of old bollocks is nearer the mark.
He might as well bark
at the moon –
that feckin’ stone’s no sooner up
than it’s rolling back
all the way down.
And what does he say?
Mustn’t shirk –
keen as a hawk,
lean as a shark
Mustn’t shirk!
But I lie alone in the dark,
feeling like Noah’s wife did
when he hammered away at the Ark;
like Frau Johann Sebastian Bach.
My voice reduced to a squawk,
my smile to a twisted smirk;
while, up on the deepening murk of the hill,
he is giving one hundred per cent and more to his work.
Little Red-Cap

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out

into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s
caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf.

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud

in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink,

my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.

The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes

but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that
night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws
and went in search of a living bird – white dove –
which flew, straight, from my hands to his open mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with
books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

But then I was young – and it took ten years

in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon

to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.
 allusion - popular novel - "jane Eyre" (charlotte bronte)

mc is punished inside a red room bc she's not been good

THE OTHER COUNTRY (1990)
suggest shared experience anger subtle connotation
We came from our own country in a red room
hurried rush without context, sets a
which fell through the fields, our mother singing enjambment positive context - Duffy's
style of contrasting +ve
with -ve stanzas
our father’s name to the turn of the wheels.
My brothers cried, one of them bawling, Home,
italics + repetition + enjambment for emphasis, adds sense of rush
Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,
the street, the house, the vacant rooms
where we didn’t live any more. I stared
at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.
symbolising their situation - they don't know where they are going, being controlled

metaphor
All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,
leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue
where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.
Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,
leading to unimagined pebble-dashed estates, big boys
eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand.
My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
in my head. I want our own country, I said.

But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,

and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only
a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue
shedding its skin like a snake, my voice
 in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think
I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space
and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?
strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.

lil similar to medusa

MEAN TIME (1993) character in great expectations (charles dickens)

fiance runs away with HER money one day bef the marriage

HAVISHAM keep wearing the same wedding dress,

abt the never-ending feeling of a breakup leaves the wedding scene untouched

Duffy's style of negation

Plosives - BB - beginning with highlights her anger & resentment
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
since being abandoned

I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it increasing degree of verbs emphasis - verbs that
aren't usually associated with death
disgust, rotten
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes, evil, maligning, extreme hate
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.
veins; starving and feeble

unmarried, young woman imagined

Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days
clear indication she is rotting

in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress

no reciprocation (?) showing that she's descending into insanity - mentally disturbed
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe; rejection = stigmatized in (victorian) society
DISASSOCIATION
the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this
GOLLUM
LINE BREAK - EMPHASIS ON ME - SELF PITY
cursed by society
to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.
vivid imagery - connotating curses as a colour (purplish - bruises?)

Some nights better, the lost body over me,

imagining what would have happened if she was w/ her lover
 desperate for anyone to be close, lack of comfort
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till I suddenly bite awake. Love’s

hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting all metaphors - bursting the myth of love, harsh reality of love
harsh call to reality
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake. stabbing the institution of marriage
erotic imagery
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon. necrophilia mental illness

Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks. stuttering - sadness, disturbance
MIND also breaks; (bones)
 Poem (contrary to name) explores the raw realities of love rejecting conventional portrayals of love

VALENTINE
strong abrupt start - adds / sets the tone for the realism throughout the poem + emphasizes her aversion to conventional love
immediately rejects conventional symbols of love - sugar-coated gifts
begins w/ a
"negative"
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
short, terse cadence juxtaposed this cliche representation with____
anticlimatic - not a normal gift
I give you an onion. short, static sentences emphasized by full stop creates a
(conventionally) unromantic and rather direct tone
moon = preciousIt is a moon wrapped in brown paper. symbolizes something valuable concealed as something ordinary
& is white (pure)

like commitment
It promises light positive tone of love = comfort and hope
in a relationship
like the careful undressing of love. suggests tenderness & intimacy, where in love /
relationship there are no secret & absolute trust
alludes to an onion's layers?

Here. second person pov creates intimacy - act of giving onion to the reader
continues symbolism of onion (that makes one tear up)
repetition of
the
It will blind you with tears slight change in tone - bringing attention to the reality
like a lover.
declaratives of love - love is not always easy
certain, matter-of-fact tone sad tears.
"it will" create
sense of
inevitability -
It will make your reflection imagery of someone looking into mirror while crying,
love WILL be
difficult a wobbling photo of grief. making picture 'wobbly'

v strong noun, extreme sadness

I am trying to be truthful. 2nd person address emphasizes her earnestness and effort at being completely honest

single line stanzas stress their importance = emphasize reasons why she gifts onion
Not a cute card or a kissogram. repeated harsh consonant sound = scathing tone
indicating her disapproval for these gifts as 'truthful'

I give you an onion. repetition of line emphasizes onion's symbolic importance

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful lots of force, passionate and difficult to deny(?)

as we are, enjambment suggests she has faith in the relationship

for as long as we are. poem centers around 2 ppl, v intimate
also UNCERTAIN - (as long as we are) creeps in - maybe love is not forever

Take it. imperative - command to addressee - creates sense of urgency

fluid nature - love

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring, suggest restrictive nature of marriage
(onion ring at centre comparison)
of onion can
represent if you like.
whatever lover
wants it to Lethal. highlighting deadly, permanently damaging effect relationships can have

Its scent will cling to your fingers, feelings of love can last even when relationship is over
(like an onion's strong scent)
 abrupt, negative ending

cling to your knife.

repetition emphasizes the lasting nature of love

Poem written in FREE VERSE = reflects the changing uncertainty of the nature relationships can go (fluid nature
of love)

it doesn't use a traditional rhyming scheme that supports her raw, real portrayal efforts of love
 Captures the moment the term ‘nostalgia’ was coined through her poem. Based on
17th century Swiss mercenaries who were hired to kill for money (and effective)
but being away from home for so long made them begin missing their home.

NOSTALGIA 'early mercenaries' allusion to swiss soliders

the unkown force of nostalgia referred to as "it"

Those early mercenaries, it made them ill – harsh hyphen punctuation - physical break
allusion to Switzerland (their homeland) +ve connotation representative of dist. b/w soldiers and
leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine air descrip of their home
alliteration & to go down, down. What they got repetition of 'down' - literally and metaphorically -
dissonance, descending mountains and decline in emotional state
(harsh c
was
consonant sounds)
money, dull, crude coins clenched History says that, during the early days, traders bit
their gold coins to check its authenticity when the
adj 'dull' and
'crude' makes it in the teeth; -ve
strange food, the wrong taste,
connotation; is foreign precious metal was used as a form of currency. Gold
emphasis through repetition of "wrong" -is a soft metal which dents under slight stress and
seem that the everything is extremely foreign - sense leaves a mark when gnawed.
coins aren't worth
leaving their
stones in the belly; and the wrong sounds, of alienation - and seems 'wrong' to them
+ clenched = sense of dissatisfaction and discomfort
homeland - what
they lost the wrong smells, the wrong light, every breath –
wrong. They had an ache here, Doctor, paralinguistic meaning through emphasis and tone of
"here" - in the heart (formatted as italics in o.g)
they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them.
[hyperbole]; screenshot from 'Ditto' - girl slumped against bed w
hand cast - also metaphorically 'killing' her real social life - boy
nostalgia - once medically termed became more real, shocking (+credible)
sees her crying alone and she's embarassed and runs away +
It was a given name. Hearing tell of it, KILLING HER CAST SCENE
hesitant/resistant to move
there were those who stayed put, fearful
oxymoron captures
phonological repetition/alliteration - like a series of exhales, sighs, readers
experience the sadness and loss (by/thru nostalgia) experienced by the
duality of nostalgia
- joy from fond of a sweet pain in the heart; of how it hurt, soliders
in that heavier air, to hear
memories but weight of nostalgia - emotional burden compared to 'finer air' in homeland
pain/sorrow from personification - music of home calling them to their past, sense of longing and melancholy
their loss / absence caesura
the music of home – the sad pipes – summoning,
separation of past & present 'Ditto' features NJ as girls Heeseo 'meets' in memory
in the dwindling light of the plains, more alliteration - that is distorted to her meeting them now also

a particular place – where maybe you met a girl, modality of verb uncertain - suggests unreliability of memory

or searched for a yellow ball in the long grass,

memory has the quality to pick out very precise details but miss out
huge chunks of experiences as well. Through the specifics of 'yellow'
and 'long' but 'maybe' this sense of recollection is conveyed
found it just as your mother called you in.
simple childhood memories; in NJ nostalgia centers on specific, personal details
similar nostalgia created thorugh
childhood focus by school setting
But the word was out. Some would never
fall in love had they not heard of love.
So the priest stood at the stile with his head
in his hands, crying
r at the workings of memory
through the colour of
cc
leaves, and the schoolteacher
opened a book to the scent of her youth, too late.
It was Spring when one returned, with his life
in a sack on his back, to find the same street
with the same sign over the inn, the same bell
chiming the hour on the clock, and everything changed.
STANDING FEMALE NUDE (1985)

SHOOTING STARS

After I no longer speak they break our fingers

to salvage my wedding ring. Rebecca Rachel Ruth
Aaron Emmanuel David, stars on all our brows
beneath the gaze of men with guns. Mourn for the daughters,

upright as statues, brave. You would not look at me.

You waited for the bullet. Fell. I say, Remember.
Remember these appalling days which make the world
Forever bad. One saw I was alive. Loosened

his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.

Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.

How would you prepare to die, on a perfect April evening

with young men gossiping and smoking by the graves?
My bare feet felt the earth and urine trickled
Down my legs until I heard the click. Not yet. A trick.

After immense suffering someone takes tea on the lawn.

After the terrible moans a boy washes his uniform.
After the history lesson children run to their toys the world
turns in its sleep the spades shovel soil Sara Ezra …

Sister, if seas part us, do you not consider me?

Tell them I sang the ancient psalms at dusk
inside the wire and strong men wept. Turn thee
unto me with mercy, for I am desolate and lost.
 writing in 3 pov - shows the passivity and loneliness Themes in poem
War, conflict, isolation,
WAR PHOTOGRAPHER indifference/passivity, ethics
of documenting war

distancing from speaker

In his dark room he is finally alone
*
*given context, (films made in dark during olden time)
dark conveys sense of calm / peace

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows. understand the difficult to maintain order among
chaos, tough job
The only light is red and softly glows, ** red light in church signifies god presence
regular rhymes bc
as though this were a church**and he photographer job is to
maintain ORDER in priest = photographer effect?
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
imagery monotonous CHAOS
both enlighten, aware, but pr = brainwash, ph = disrupt

dif places Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

caesura! effect - emphasis on each word, full pause All flesh -> Synecdoche for human bodies
grass = biblical allusion to killing fields
hands did not shake
when clicking He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
(dutifulness) but solution = liq chem solutions + solutions for war by photos
when developing
them, memory of
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then !dutifulness!
caesura, sudden shift
war, trauma
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
ordinariness, comfort
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.
violent tone shift

Something is happening. A stranger’s features

faintly start to twist before his eyes, photograph of a dead body

a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries

re-emphasizing what kind of a job
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval photographers have to go through
modality - ethics of documenting war
without words to do what someone must
asking permission bef taking pic
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black and white INDIFFERENCE, PASSIVITY doesn't really know the tragedy,

usually a light from which his editor will pick out five or six
but only picks up some of the
many stories captured

gossip, games,for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick

newspaper will

!laidback!
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
isolation, indifference, way of life, false empathy
cannot understand rlly the struggle photographer + ppl have
trying to
isolate himself From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where gone through, they are comparitively drowning in luxury

from trauma
he earns his living and they do not care.
because he
has to leave,
do his duty as
photographer the people viewing the photographs
 NON LIT TEXT IDEAS
Dolphins --> ADH
PEETA video
Paper 2?
You will never BAKER like this again (gory)
THE DOLPHINS about nature - philosophically
WWF POSTERS
alluding to seaworld
World is what you swim in, or dance, it is simple.
We are in our element but we are not free.
Outside this world you cannot breathe for long. other dolphin talked about
The other has my shape. The other's movement
"other" = dolphin
nature initially forms my thoughts. And also mine. There is a man
treated
everyone same, and there are hoops. There is a constant flowing guilt. polyseminal phrase - having several meaning
but humans
meddling w/ it
repr. dolphins dichotomy - no freedom in these waters guilt - dolphin's; not able to do anything about being
We have found no truth in these waters, subjected to the tricks
by nature
(used to no explanations tremble on our flesh. KNOW - dont understand WHY they are trapped, away from truth
live in We were blessed and now we are not blessed. antithesis
they know but not WHY
freedom,
nature) After travelling such space for days we began
translating to translate. It was the same space. It is "sameness" of the language mirrors the sameness of this
human lang "space"—this enclosed pool that never changes no matter how
the same space always and above it is the man. much the dolphins swim; they can only go in circles
literal ref to seaworld (above in the stands)
+ controlling nature of men

And now we are no longer blessed, for the world literally physical barrier - waters cannot deepen
all consuming prison + metaph. dreaming is pointless
will not deepen to dream in. The other knows so restricting a place you give up on dreaming; of thinking of
ever coming out
and out of love reflects me for myself.
joke around, sympathize
We see our silver skin flash by like memory memories swimming through the ocean, sunlight reflecting off (silver skin flash)
sudden contrast to current state - jarring call to reality
of somewhere else. There is a coloured ball
another age where nature treated everyone equally
we have to balance till the man has disappeared.

hope has disappeared - only source of light

The moon has disappeared. We circle well-worn groovesmonotonous repetitive routine in seaworld
of water on a single note. Music of loss foreverdolphin cry = sadness of loss (music) cotnrast in +ve & -ve
connotation bittersweet
from the other's heart which turns my own to stone. slanted rhyme
plastic = fake
There is a plastic toy. There is no hope. We sink
could be part of a game, diving,
to the limits of this pool until the whistle blows.
restriction oppression
There is a man and our mind knows we will die here.
repeated
acceptance of their fate - so smart, yet losing will to live

NO HOPE reinforced