‘The World’s Wife’ by Carol Ann Duffy
I was so excited when I opened this most beautiful of books on Christmas morning. The entirety is so well presented, from its beautiful silver-foiled cover, to the fact that it comes complete with a contents page.
The blurb of The World’s Wife is so enticing: ‘That saying? “Behind every famous man…?” From Mrs Midas to Queen Kong, from Elvis’ twin sister to Pygmalion’s bride, they’re all here, in The World’s Wife. Witty and thought-provoking, this tongue-in-cheek, no-holds-barred look at the real movers and shakers across history, myth and legend… the wives of the great, the good, the not so good, and the legendary are given a voice in Carol Ann Duffy’s sparkling and inventive collection’.
Each and every poem within the book’s pages is so clever. Duffy tells tales which we all know, and which form great parts of our human consciousness, from the perspectives of the women who appear within them. ‘Little Red Cap’ is narrated by Red Riding Hood, and ‘Queen Herod’ from the viewpoint of Herod’s wife, who states that it was her idea to ‘kill each mother’s son’ so that no man would be able to make her baby daughter cry, for example.
The World’s Wife is absolutely beautiful in terms of the writing within each poem, and each syllable has clearly been so carefully thought out. Duffy has a marvellous way with words, able to craft such vivid images in just a single line or two.
(From ‘Thetis):
‘I was wind, I was gas,
I was all hot air, trailed
clouds for hair.
I scrawled my name with a hurricane
when out of the blue
roared a fighter plane’
I love the different techniques which have been used throughout. This causes each and every poem to stand out within the collection. Each voice which has been crafted is distinctive. In The World’s Wife, Duffy has demonstrated that she is the creme de la creme of contemporary poetry.
Purchase from The Book Depository
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