Dickens was an energetic walker and more than an occasional insomniac. His esssay ‘Night walks ‘ collected in The Uncommercial Traveller explores the experience of sleepnessness as experienced by a… Read More »Charles Dickens' Night Walks: Analysis and thoughts.
What do we really know of others or ourselves? I may sometimes complacently profess ‘self knowledge’ but very often I surprise ‘myself ‘ and I do believe we are all… Read More »Sheenagh Pugh's The Bereavement of the Lionkeeper poem
For a change I will write underneath each stanza of Carol Ann Duffy’s Crush and discuss the poem in this way. My main concern with this method is that it… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Crush: Analysis and thoughts revisited.
This poem declares its imaginative mission with a moving, compassionate simplicity, framed by the speculative, ‘If’. We enter the poem with this tentatively held permission to ‘tell it backwards’, after… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Last Post: An Analysis Revisited.
Reading by Moira Eribenne (revisited 18/12/2011) Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Prayer’ : Analysis and Revisitation by Moira Eribenne
A Saturday Morning revisitation. The exotic security of primary education is superbly captured in this poem. This seemingly oxymoronic combination fosters learning of the most enduring kind, as the… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s In Mrs Tilscher’s Class Analysis and thoughts: Revisited! FREE VIDEO!
I spoke yesterday about the casually cold tone of the poem. The tone is essential to the poem’s message and meaning as it is suggestive of the voice of the speaker… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Stealing: Analysis of First Two stanzas
This is a cold poem in more ways than one.The subject matter is seasonally icy and so is the tone of the speaker. The insouciant delivery suggests pride and even aggressive… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Stealing -An Analysis and thoughts.(Part One)
I read this shortly after W H Auden’s famous poem Funeral Blues -both deeply moving poems about monumental loss. Both poems suggesting that (like Mansfield’s story, The Life of Ma Parker) ‘There was nowhere’ left… Read More »Sheenagh Pugh: The Bereavement of the Lion- Keeper An Analysis
(I read this last night as part of a WJEC GCE past English paper. A lovely gift of a poem). I love this poem’s intimacy. The speaker grumbles his way… Read More »WH Auden: Roman Wall Blues Analysis and thoughts.
Carol Ann Duffy’s Demeter is one of my favourite poems and moves me intensely. I think its position at the close of Duffy’s The World’s Wife is essential as it… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Demeter inspired this story about Shapes!
”Where I lived-winter and hard earth. I sat in my cold stone rooom choosing tough words, granite, flint, to break the ice.My broken heart- I tried that, but it skimmed,… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Demeter and Miss Havisham's room.
Great Expectations is being shown over Christmas. It’s a new version with Gillian Anderson playing Miss Havisham. I was struck by a comment about Ms Anderson’s portrayal, made in a Telegraph… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Medusa, Demeter, Havisham and Mrs Lazarus- Stones, Mourning and Identity!
Carol Ann Duffy conveys the abject stoniness of grief in her poem, Mrs Lazarus. The widow of the most famous ‘miracle’ in the Christian Bible narrates her own ‘death’ after… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy: Mrs Lazarus analysis revised.
New Tusi Note now available to download and buy. Just the ideas you need to be different! The idea of any existence before ‘me’ often seems rather weird- a try… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy :’Before you were mine’ An Analysis Revisited. FREE VIDEO!
Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry features on many GCSE, A Level and Undergraduate courses. Her poems are some of the most searched for on Google and on Amazon underlining her justifiable… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy Selected Poems: Analysis, Notes, Ideas.
Apparently this poem by Rosssetti and set to music by Holst, was voted the United Kingdom’s favourite carol . Today, walking my two dogs around a deserted park, I found myself singing the… Read More »Christina Rossetti and Carol Ann Duffy : In the Bleak Midwinter.
This is one of my favourite Carol Ann Duffy poems. It appears in Mean Time and has a witty pathos all of its own. Even as the poet receates… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Litany: An analysis revisited.
Pablo Neruda’s poem embraces the suffering endured by human beings because they choose to differentiate themselves so keenly and resolutely from one another. The I/thou relationship so fraught with misunderstanding,… Read More »Pablo Neruda: Too many Names- a tusi bite.
Poe’s words are uniformly despondent here. His word pools create a relentlessly gloomy atmosphere that defies nature’s capacity for renewal. His tone is monotone, his visions those of darkness and… Read More »Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher
Someone might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of… Read More »Jude The Obscure Book One Chapter IV: Hardy's own bleak house of despair?
‘I once more smell the dew and rain.’ This is a truly rejuvenating poem, acknowledging human error and frailty, yet also celebrating the power of spiritual connection; the healing of perception through… Read More »George Herbert's The Flower: An Analysis and Tusi bite.
This is an old entry revisited where I ruminate over Carol Ann Duffy’s popularity in terms of her ability to make us feel nostalgic about experiences we may not have… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Stafford Afternoons: An another analysis-or why is Carol Ann Duffy so popular?
‘Where are you going?’ Such a simple question. Yet the man who asked George was not a simple man. He was eager to talk because he had lost many things;… Read More »George goes for a walk.
How many times in our childhoods are we asked the question: ‘Where are you going?’ And here in Carol Ann Duffy’s evocative recollection of an afternoon adventure, we re-enter the… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Stafford Afternoons: An Analysis Revisited.
