Feminine Gospels

by Carol Ann Duffy

Overview

A new collection of poems ranging over the experience of women—historical and imagined, real-life and larger than life—from the award-winning author of The World's Wife.

From the sadness of Elizabeth I, looking back on her long and powerful but lonely life, to the travails of a woman whose work is literally never done as she continues to trawl the seas to feed her billion offspring, to a movingly lyrical reflection on the beauty of a growing child, Carol Ann Duffy explores in this volume the myriad components of women's lives and loves through the crystallizing prism of poetry. Sometimes erotic and personal, sometimes historical and grand, sometimes witty and full of surprises, the poems in Feminine Gospels are all beautifully crafted works that are as varied in style as the poems in Duffy's earlier acclaimed volume The World's Wife. Together, they will challenge and entertain as they explore the fullness of the female condition through their author's unique poetic voice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571211302
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	04/01/2005
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	667,200
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.19(d)

About the Author

Carol Ann Duffy is the author of several volumes of poetry, including two for children. Her most recent volume is The World's Wife (Faber, 1999). She lives in Manchester, England.

Editorial Reviews

One of Britain's premiere poets here does what she does best, joining wild, surrealistic imagery and pointillist detail to create sharply realized, visionary poems . . . Duffy never settles for mere cleverness. Her poetic technique is sure and subtle.” —Patricia Monaghan, Booklist

“Carol Ann Duffy is at once lyrical and subversive, delightful and dangerous. No other poet I know occupies a place between such apparent contradictions.” —Billy Collins, Poet Laureate

“[Duffy writes] with lyric intensity . . . She moves through the lives she invents with a kind of casual confidence.” —Elaine Feinstein, The Guardian (London)

“Beautiful . . . Feminine Gospels shows its author still exploring, testing her imaginative powers and masterly way with language.” —Lesley Duncan, The Herald (Glasgow)

“[Carol Ann Duffy's] work has a kind of muscular, lyrical intensity, yet is always rooted in the muck and mulch of real experience.” —Adam Newey, New Statesman

From the Publisher

In preaching Feminine Gospels, Manchester, U.K.-based poet Carol Ann Duffy creates speakers to articulate "The Diet," "The Woman Who Shopped," "The Laughter of Swofford Girls High" and a woman "dreaming/ till the stars are blue in the face/ printing the news of their old light." Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

British poet Duffy revisits queens and school girls, dieting, shopping, and work in closely observed miniatures that have nothing to do with agenda. A real find. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal