Carol Ann Duffy, The World's Wife Review

Overall Rating

Wonderfully compressed language that manages to appear 'natural' and inevitable too. 'Demeter' is a perfect poem. Captures the utter desolation of abject grief through 'granite' words, the irony that loss is as much a death for the mourner as the mourned and then the dizzying realisation of resurrection...the 'glimpse' of the beloved when all is not lost.
Mts Lazarus explores wonderfully the 'what if' of perspective. The story of Lazarus is one of central miracles and anchors of Xian faith and here it is revisited from previously unvoiced perspective of Mrs Lazarus. Shattering lanagauge and images.
And then the wickedly subversive poem 'From Mrs Tiresias'. Sexy, sad and stoical.

I think it is a superb collection.

'The World's Wife' raises the dead and the silent - historical and mythic all female charcters find the words and the voices with which to revise the familiar. These new dramatic monologues give birth to refreshing and at times disturbing versions of 'realities'. Carol Ann Duffy is fascinated by resurrrection in many forms: linguistic, sexual, spiritual.
Oddly enough, these monologues are also love stories. Love may have gone wrong, may have become compromised, but tenderness lingers, even in the most unexpected places.
A stunning collection and one that will endure!