[New-Poetry] Carol Ann Duffy gets the laurels

[Bob Grumman]

david.bircumshaw at ntlworld.com wrote:
> I agree with you that the poem is emotional, Anny, but I fear it's something of an emotional trap.
>
> Non-British readers probably wouldn't realise this about the Shipping Forecast which the last lines quote but in the 1950s and early 60s the BBC channel on which it is broadcast , nowadays BBC Radio 4, was then called 'the Home Service'. It was one of only three channels. People of Duffy's (or my) generation were among the last to grow up with radio as the main live intrusion of the big world outside and the litanical like recital of Shipping areas early in the morning bundles a whole set of fixed stereotyped responses. 
> Prayer comes harder than that (other than the Lord's Prayer, which is a special case)
>
> best
>
> dave 
I'm a little unclear here, Dave.  Sounds to me like Duffy is doing what 
I think poets should do (at least some of the time) and I almost always 
try to do--pick accessible, emotionally-resonant images and make a poem 
out of them.  For instance, I've more than once centered my boyhood 
treehut in poems.  Very standard--but it seems to me it's not the 
iimages that count but how you use them. 
My problem with Duffy's poem is not that it isn't a good poem, but that 
I feel there are hundreds of poets around making poems as good as it, 
only a few of whom are getting the publicity and money for it that she 
is, and dozens making better ones, none of whom is getting any publicity 
and money for it. 

--Bob