Childhood and Memories poetry Essay

Carol Ann Duffy was born in 1955 and has four brothers; she grew up in Staffordshire with a strong religious upbringing. At fourteen she decided to become a poet and has written ever since. A lot of her works look at growing up and past experiences especially from childhood. Most of these poems are published in her 1993 book of poetry, â€Å"Mean Time†. I am going to concentrate on five of her poems; â€Å"The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team†, â€Å"Litany†, â€Å"Stafford Afternoons†, â€Å"Brothers† and â€Å"Prayer†. One of the most obvious points that stand out in all of Duffy’s poems is religion and it isn’t surprising having gone to catholic schools since the age of seven! The poem â€Å"Litany† has a clear religious meaning with the title having Christian references; a litany in the church is a list of people who the congregation pray for in a time of need. By Litany, I believe that Carol Ann Duffy is actually trying to portray the things that really stood out in her childhood, a good example of this could be the first litany in the poem, â€Å"candlewick bedspread three piece suite display cabinet†. Perhaps Duffy was often old of for damaging her mother’s sofa or can remember her mother tidying up the house and the bedspread for visitors. Another poem with religious iconography is â€Å"Brothers†, in which Carol Ann Duffy describes her four siblings, on of which is illustrated as â€Å"an alter boy† I believe she is trying to tell the reader that they lived solitary lives and didn’t have a very active social live inside or outside the family. This is because of the portrayal of her other brothers, â€Å"a boy practising scales†, â€Å"a boy playing tennis with a wall† and â€Å"a baby crying†. If you look at these collectively you can see that these are quite lonesome activities and events, none of them involve other people. My final example of religious connotations is in â€Å"Prayer†, most of the poem is in iambic pentameter and I believe that this is trying to show that religion can bring order in to a hectic lifestyle. The poem is about loosing faith but still having hope and a type of sub-conscious faith in your mind. The rhythmic structure along with the religious connotations throughout the poem give hope to reader by allowing us to believe that the poet has suffered the same as you and has got through their experiences and are here to remember them. Carol Ann Duffy also uses the effect of the senses on the reader, my first example of this is in â€Å"Litany†; the poet uses taste to relieve the memory of being disciplined. â€Å"The taste of soap† is quite a strong image that, unfortunately, most people can remember from being in the shower or having a wash! The use of senses gives the reader the chance to really imagine themselves in the poet’s shoes and gives the poem a more realistic picture. In â€Å"Brothers†, Carol Ann Duffy uses another sense; hearing to emphasis her mothers repetitive comments about children and her wishes to be a grandmother but then finding out that Duffy was a lesbian. I believe that the phase â€Å"I hear her life in the words† obviously this is a turning point in Duffy’s life; telling your mother your gay isn’t the easiest thing in the world! And the use of senses here shows how much this experience really did stand out. These two examples are quite obvious but the final one is a little more subtle. It is again in Litany and is synaesthesia, it mixes more than one sense, Duffy explains how a butterfly moves into her hands, â€Å"a butterfly stammered into my curious hands† here the two senses being used are touch, the butterfly crawling onto her hands and voice in the word stammering it is a piece of onomatopoeia. Synaesthesing allows the audience to imagine one thing, in this case someone stammering and put it into another situation, a butterfly crawling and flapping its wings. This gives the all important realistic picture.