We are on the verge of the GCSE English examinations once more, so I thought I would look again at Carol Ann Duffy’s Hour, a poem originally collected in Carol Ann Duffy’s prize winning collection Rapture. And in response to some honest readers on the blog, I will try to make my analysis a little clearer and to watch the vocabulary.
I am also endeavouring not to cheat and look up what I last said! Besides which, making myself read the poem again is refreshing and should prove exciting as I am sure I will notice things differently….I hope!
Short Analysis:
Duffy’s poem as the title suggests is very much concerned, if not preoccupied with the experience of time in relation to intimacy and love. For what does an ‘hour’ mean when we are in love? Can it render our love extra special, dramatic, intense? Does it heighten our capacity for pleasure?
What does an ‘hour’ signify when our love is secret or frowned upon or is difficult in some way. Are we more or less desirable to our lover? Duffy is writing this sonnet as a form of reply or continued dialogue with Shakespeare’s very famous sonnet 116. I include an extract here from that sonnet as it has bearing on Duffy’s poem and my analysis.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
Shakespeare argues that love is NOT ‘Time’s fool’ as love can survive the onslaught or passage of time and can maintain its power and integrity. ‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks’. Time may try to wear love out and love may have to overcome the intervention of obstacles to meeting, but this love will survive ‘even to the edge of doom.’
Duffy’s poem ‘Hour’ replies to this famous sonnet with a play on the wording of the original poem. Duffy declares rather differently that ‘Love’s time’s beggar.’ In Duffy, Love has to do a deal with the autocratic dictator ‘time’ who is personified in order to give an intimacy and secrecy to the poem. This personification is continued as if the persona is allowing the poet and her lover a special ‘bought’ time bought almost with a ‘dropped coin‘ empowering their love and making them feel ‘rich’ with the opportunity for love.
This ‘Hour’ is spent not on dining out or an exchange of flowers( I assume here that the lovers are both female) but rather on a luxurious feast of kissing in the outdoors- specifically a ‘grass ditch.’! This part of the poem makes me smile as the ditch surprises the reader. Not even a sofa or a bed. . It is bathetic( anti climatic) and I start to worry about damp and grass stains! perhaps it is too self consciously anti climatic and whilst revealing the loveers desire to take their pleasure where they can, it also seems rather deliberate? But perhaps lovers can be rather deliberate and ‘natural’?
The poet exists in a state of ecstasy as she adores at the shrine of the beloved’s beauty. The worship of the hair is for me a definite sign of the lover’s female identty. The hair is almost worshipped even fetishised as it is ‘treasure’ in the way that hair in a Pre-Raphaelite painting may be worshipped too…
I have said on my earlier blogs that the reference to Midas makes the love fallible. Midas was a selfish King obsessed by wealth and gold and Duffy writes a very laconic poem about Midas in her previous collection The World’s Wife. it is as if in worshipping the golden hair, Duffy is also recognising the unobtainability of her lover: ‘Turning your limbs to gold.’ I am sure Duffy has also seen the James Bond film Goldfinger where poor old Bond girl Shirley Eaton dies from being painted head to toe in gold…beautiful to look at but definitely dead!
Duffy’s fabulous feast of outdoor kissing is a deal done with time and even the night. Night stays away after ‘backhanding’ has gone on, so ‘nothing dark will end our shining hour’. Even the ‘cuckoo spit’ at her lover’s ear is a matter for rejoicing. This poem gives vivid expression to the way that intense pleasure makes everything look great! Duffy and her lover are so excited that everything is wonderful to behold|!
Lots has been written about the fairy tale component of the love Duffy describes. I do find it quite possible that the lingering repetition over ‘gold, gold, gold from straw’ is suggestive of sexual pleasure. through orgasm. The poem is expanding its excitement in a way suggestive of arousal perhaps and release. Repetition gives representation to the mounting cries of excitement, perhaps not just here, but every time they meet, so passionately connected are they.Duffy’s final line voices the lovers breathlessly celebrating their intimacy through their special lexical code of ‘gold’. In other words ‘gold’ is their special term for making love.
.
Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour,
bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich.
We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers
or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.
For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hair
like treasure on the ground; the Midas light
turning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for here
we are millonaires, backhanding the night
so nothing dark will end our shining hour,
no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit
hung from the blade of grass at your ear,
no chandelier or spotlight see you better lit
than here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor,
but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.