Rapture

by Carol Ann Duffy

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 62
Rating:

Synopsis:

Rapture, Carol Ann Duffy's seventh collection, is a book-length love-poem, and a moving act of personal testimony; but what sets these poems apart from other treatments of the subject is that Duffy refuses to simplify the contradictions of love, and read its transformations -- infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancor, separation and grief -- as simply redemptive or destructive. Rapture is a map of real love, in all its churning complexity. Yet in showing us that a song can be made of even the most painful episodes in our lives, Duffy has accessed a new level of directness that sacrifices nothing in the way of subtlety of expression. These are poems that will find deep rhymes in the experience of most readers, and nowhere has Duffy more eloquently articulated her belief that poetry should speak for us all

I remembered Rapture being my favourite of Carol Ann Duffy’s collections, and I think it’s definitely high on the list, on reread, though it’s been a long time since I read the others. Her poems are always so readable: you know what she’s trying to say easily, even as the imagery is bright and the words are being played with. I generally prefer that over something more opaque, pedestrian as that may make some people think me — but I think Carol Ann Duffy’s poems have plenty to dig for, even while being readable and surface-level straightforward.

All of that is present here, along with the love and loss and longing. If I had to pick a favourite, it’d be ‘Art’:

“Art, the chiselled, chilling marble of our kiss;
locked into soundless stone, our promises,
or fizzled into poems; page print
for the dried flowers of our voice.“

Rating: 5/5