Book Review: Love Poems

Book #13

“Till his name was no longer a certain spell
for his face. The last hair on his head
floated out from a book. His scent went from the house.
The will was read. See, he was vanishing
to the small zero held by the gold of my ring.” — Mrs Lazarus by Carol Ann Duffy

I’m never very eloquent went reviewing a collection of poetry. I’m good at talking about each poem separately, just not as a whole. Anyway, here it goes.

I love this anthology. It’s a collection of what are arguably Carol Ann Duffy’s most famous love poems, from several of her previous collections. I’ve read some of her work before, and liked it, but I didn’t have a collection of hers and when I saw this I just had to have it. The language is raw, beautiful and modern. The scope for intertextual references is enormous. Take the poem from the extract I quote above. Mrs Lazarus immediately brings Sylvia Plath’s Lady Lazarus to mind. The poems are completely different, both in language and in content. Duffy’s poem is about regaining one’s self after a husband’s death, while Plath’s touches on topics such as suicide, suffocation in one’s surroundings and guilt. But when one has Plath’s poem first, it compliments the reading of Mrs Lazarus so well. The lines ebb and flow together.

The collection is slim — just over fifty pages — but full of quality content. I just hope that being assigned Poet Laureate doesn’t slow down her writing.