Feminine Gospels: Poems

by Carol Ann Duffy

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 here 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.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism, Contemporary, School, LGBT, Queer, Fiction

67 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Dame Carol Ann Duffy, DBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009.

She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold this position.

Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize.

Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence, in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

To feed one, she worked from home,
took in washing, ironing, sewing.
One small mouth, a soup-filled spoon,
life was a dream.

To feed two,
she worked outside, sewed seeds, watered,
threshed, scythed, gathered barley, wheat, corn.
Twins were born. To feed four,

she grafted harder, second job in the alehouse,
food in the larder, food on the table,
she was game, able. Feeding ten
was a different kettle,

was factory gates
at first light, oil, metal, noise, machines.
To feed fifty, she toiled, sweated, went
on the night shift, schlepped, lifted.

For a thousand more, she built streets,
for double that, high-rise flats. Cities grew,
her brood doubled, peopled skyscrapers,
trebled. To feed more, more,

she dug underground, tunnelled,
laid down track, drove trains. Quadruple came,
multiplied, she built planes, outflew sound.

[Viv JM · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's really hard to rate a book of poetry especially one that varies so much. There are poems here that warrant a 5* rating to me (like "Loud" which I thought was amazing) and then there were others that I felt lukewarm about. So, I've averaged out and gone for 3*!

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

in stripping women bare of their layers, carol ann duffy centres her anthology feminine gospels on expanding upon the historical, the archetypal, the biblical, and the fantastical visions of female identity, often rewriting them as she sees fit.

duffy is an exquisite poet but even the best of them, as she is, produce anthologies that mix on responses garnered. there will be poems you connect with, as i did, and there will be poems that you struggle to feel any emotion for despite their high quality, also as i did. the quality never once slips and remains impressive throughout, but instead, it is personal connection that wavers.

- 3.5 stars.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Women Challenge 2018

15. A poetry collection

---

“Nobody died. Nobody
wept. Nobody slept who couldn’t be woken
by the light...”

This is my first time reading Carol Ann Duffy and I am already in love with her play of words & lyric intensity, with her world of “women, girls,/ spinsters and hags, matrons, wet nurses,/witches, widows, wives, mothers of all these,” as we see from the opening poem, “The Long Queen.”

In “Beautiful,” we meet a series of famous female figures - mythical or historical -, defined by their ability to excite the longing of men, to be their “lucky charms”: “Beauty is fame. Some said/ she turned into a cloud/ and floated home,/ falling there like rain, or tears,/ upon her husband’s face.” Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Princess Diana, the latter constantly told to “act like a fucking princess by “the men from the press -/ Give us a smile, cunt..”

Not everything is this dark, but there’s this underlying sense of vulnerability echoing throughout the collection. The longest poem, although my least favourite, “The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High,” is the one where the poet’s pure delight in language is clearly tangible.

I’d never have picked this up if it weren’t for Jen Campbell talking about her poems so passionately in one of her videos. Now, I need more Carol Ann Duffy poems in my life!

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good poems that I felt I could identify with, but most of the collection I struggled to find any real interest in. Not that Duffy is a bad writer (she's clearly talented), I just didn't personally enjoy or connect with her style.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some poems I thought were excellent, but feels a bit too high brow for me and didn't feel any sort of emotional connection. Liked the historical aspects though and the theme of women.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of Feminine Gospels by Carol Ann Duffy

How a person deals with the ever day situations in life helps to better understand a person as a whole. When it comes to writing, too often authors desire to entertain with fanciful settings or exciting periods in order to examine human nature in a certain situation. On the other side of this is Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry; and in Feminine Gospels Duffy is at her best in dealing with the mundane. Duffy uses her short book of poetry in order to examine a plethora of topics all with female characters. In so doing, the reader is given a perspective into the world that isn’t greatly explored. The everyday is at times monotonous and tedious, but Duffy’s writing allows the reader to focus on what these situations say about human nature in general, and women more specifically. In Feminine Gospels, the focus is women, but Duffy does not desire to pigeon whole women into normal societal roles; or even to allow her characters comfort in any of the situations. What makes this work important is its dealings with normalcy in such a way as the reader is made to better understand the deeper intricacies of life through form and subject.

One of the most problematic portions of reviewing an entire book of poetry is that with each poem the reader is given a far different story or concept. This is very true for Duffy’s work, but what makes Feminine Gospels impressive and important is that throughout the reader is allowed to have realizations about previous poems because of a latter poems subject matter or emphasized portion with form. There is also this need for the reader to hold a certain amount of knowledge about very broad topics in order to understand Duffy’s poetry. This is evidenced by the fact that the reader will be reading a poem like “Beautiful” where Duffy examines historic women figures in an expression of use. As a way of understanding just how these women were viewed in their respective periods, and this examination of historic figures may not become evident until the reader’s knowledge corresponds with the writing. At no point is the reader given proper names to the women in “Beautiful,” a few times a man is named, but with a line like “Happy / Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, Mr. President. / the audience drooled” the reader immediately conjures Marilyn Monroe. This nod to the famous actress allows a recognition that demands the reader to go back and reassess the rest of the poem. Even later lines indicate just what Duffy is trying to present with “Beauty,” as she writes “action, cut, till she couldn’t die when she died.” This line evokes the infamy of Hollywood, and the worship of a woman not truly known. The poems main purpose is to highlight that with fame or infamy these women were still very much women, in the sense that they were so much more than what we know. As Ismail Bala once wrote about Duffy she is “seen as someone out to break literary taboos and traditions which manifest in her denunciation of traditional discourses, and ability to re-write masculinist’s representations of female identity and sexuality” (351). Bala’s statement is clearly substantiated by the poem “Beauty.” Historically women’s value are placed on their beauty and desirability. This poem also highlights the way these women were forced into a role that is unnatural for anyone, and to their tragic end.

As a way of coupling this poem, Duffy follows it up with “The Diet”a poem that examines how women are pressured into a certain body image through these idolizations. When these two poems are considered together, it allows the reader to begin to connect to the poetry. It is one thing to examine celebrity and analyze it; it is very different when a poet begins to explain how that celebrity may effect the general population. This is exemplified by the subject matter of both poems separately that both deal with certain beauty standards, and the forceful nature in which women are expected to uphold those. There is a tragedy written in “The Diet” that echoes that of the modern woman, and the final three lines of the poem “inside the Fat / Woman now, / trying to get out” helps the reader to truly examine how our world defines beauty. After witnessing a woman waste away to almost nothing, being swept by the wind there is almost this relief when we realize it is merely an inner desire. With that though, the relief is quickly destroyed by shame at the modern world’s pressures for even the everyday woman to look a certain way; much like “Beauty” dealt with famous figures.

In analyzing these two poems, it begins to look at subject matter, but a large part of what makes Duffy’s poetry important is the formatting and word choice. In the famous Birthday line referenced above the line breaks perfectly mimic the way in which Monroe sang it, allowing the reader to begin to recollect even before the “Mr. President” which just solidifies and intensifies the reference. There is a later poem in Feminine Gospel titled “The Woman Who Shopped” where Duffy uses formatting to add emphasis, and even allows the title to become the opening line of the poem. The use of line breaks and capitalization (or lack of) allows the reader see emphasis on the important ideas of the poem. There is an expertise and intentionality present throughout Duffy’s work that is exemplified in “The Woman Who Shopped.” With each poem, the reader must relearn how to read, or at least take time to look at formatting not to miss the greater artistry present.

As the book moves forward the focus of the poems begin to shift from how women are viewed, to how women view themselves or even how they portray themselves. In Duffy’s poem “Sub” the reader is asked to consider “what if a woman was there,” in certain situations. All of the situations considered in the poem are male dominated, but Duffy wants the reader to realize it is by intentional exclusion that women were not a part of these events. Sports is an important consideration, as well as music; both of which there have been male and female seperation. When considering a sport like soccer, there is soccer (played by men) and women’s soccer, where “women’s” is added in order to separate and differentiate. There is an obvious connotation present in the work that women are capable just not allowed. Men dominate historical events, and women join later as “the first woman X.” Duffy is causing the reader to begin to question these very hard and true facts of everyday life in extraordinary circumstances and representations as a way of allowing the reader to become uncomfortable with themselves. Then as a way of continuing this discussion, Duffy follows “Sub” with a poem titled “Anon” as a way of demonstrating commonly attributed practice of inscribing famous quotes as “Anonymous” which has begun to be attributed as an indicator of forgotten women in history.

Feminine Gospels then culminates in the longest poem titled “The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High,” which truly takes everything that Duffy has put forth in the first half of the book in a true to life story in poem form. The reader is given an extensive list of characters in “The Laughter” which represent dynamic women in varying situations of school, work, and personal life. The main focus is on the school teachers, and just what the adolescent giggling seems to ignite. Duffy takes the reader through the school day filling in each character as she goes, but the true exploration of each woman is not until we are able to understand her personal life. By doing so the reader is truly asked what have you learned up to this point. Almost as if Duffy has been our teacher building different analytical skills in order to give us a vibrant test in scenario form as a way of gauging what we have learned.

Throughout Feminine Gospels the reader understands a little bit more about how society views or pressures women, and even how women view and pressure themselves. This is all done through subject and form as a way of enlightening the reader into very current issues in the modern world. It is not merely a desire to encapsulate women, but a desire to press the issue of better understanding women. At no point does Duffy let the reader off the hook with a soft poem about love or even desire. Feminine Gospels is very much an indictment on the modern world, and how women are still very much controlled.

Work Cited
Bala, Ismail. "Woman-To-Woman: Displacement, Sexuality and Gender in Carol Ann Duffy's Poetry". Linguistic Association of Nigeria, vol 4, no. 2, 2011, Accessed 29 Apr 2018.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Feminine Gospels. London, Picador, 2012

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Carol Ann Duffy’s for some years now; she is a wonderful poet, whose work always speaks to me. I was in awe when I read The Bees, and cheering for girl power when making my way through The World’s Wife. Her Christmas books are an absolute delight, and she has even introduced one of my favourite novels, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, in the Vintage Classics edition. When I therefore found two of her poetry books whilst in an Oxfam bookshop, preparing for their Scorching Summer Reads project, I snapped them up immediately. I loved Rapture, but the second volume, Feminine Gospels, was something else entirely.

Firstly, I must say that I absolutely love what Feminine Gospels has set out to do: ‘Exploring issues of sexuality, beauty and biology, Carol Ann Duffy’s poems tell tall stories as though they are unconditional truths, spinning modern myths from images of women as bodies – blood, bones and skin – and corpses, as writers and workers, shoppers and slimmers, as fairytale royals or girls next door’. Its style and focus was reminiscent of The World’s Wife for me.

Feminine Gospels marks the first time in which I have read any of Duffy’s longer poems; some of those collected here are almost of Tennyson length. Her style lends itself incredibly well to these longer works. Throughout, Duffy makes some shrewd observations, and poses some fascinating thoughts and questions; in ‘The Long Queen’, for instance, she asks: ‘What was she queen of? Women, girls, / spinsters and hags, matrons, wet nurses, / witches, widows, wives, mothers of all those’. She praises difference and diversity – for Duffy, all women matter (as, of course, they should in the real world too).

Duffy’s brand of magical realism is glorious and memorable. ‘The Map-Woman’ is a powerful and thoughtful poem, about the experiences and places mapped upon a body; ‘Beautiful’ holds a few echoes of ‘The Lady of Shallot’; ‘The Diet’ is about a woman who starves herself so much that she ends up shrinking. Duffy describes her as ‘Anorexia’s true daughter, a slip / of a girl, a shadow, dwindling away’. Allow me to share a passage from ‘The Woman Who Shopped’, in which a materialistic lady effectively turns into a department store:

‘… Her ribs
were carpeted red, her lungs glittered with chandeliers
over the singing tills, her gut was the food hall…
She loved her own smell, sweat and Chanel,
loved the crowds jostling and thronging her bones, loved
the credit cards swiping themselves in her blood, her breath

was gift wrapping, the whisper of tissue and string…’

As with all of Duffy’s work which I have read to date, her vocabulary has been carefully selected to create startling imagery, and originality prevails: ‘The sky was unwrapping itself, ripping itself into shreds’ (from ‘The Woman Who Shopped’). So much emphasis has been placed upon all of the senses, and the generational scope too is nothing short of masterful.

In Feminine Gospels, the woman – in all of her many shapes and forms – has been presented as the oracle. So much of the poetry here is to do with growth, whether physically or emotionally. There is much importance here, too; she weaves together the stories of women with history, conflicts, and the family, and all has been masterfully interconnected. Feminine Gospels is an incredibly powerful book, which every woman should pick up at some point in her life.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carol Ann Duffy's poetry is about women and female identity. These poems are slightly aslant from the last volume of hers I read, The World's Wife, in that aside from "Beautiful," which is about the effect of beauty on Helen, Cleopatra, and Marilyn Monroe, the women she concerns herself with are those of the everyday, anonymous world. "Loud" tells of women becoming vocal in support of humane action and support for their own rights. My favorite in Feminine Gospels is a long narrative poem called "The Laughter of Stafford Girls' High" relating an epidemic of laughter in the school and how it affects the teachers. It's wonderfully affectionate and quirky, and becoming part of the frame of the narrative and built into the blocks of stanzas is the marvelous line "Bad words ran in her head like mice." I laughed at it and quietly cheered for the characters.

I've been reading Duffy for a while but think this collection is my favorite. These poems are verbally energetic. They're delightful that way. And though she uses conventional stanza forms she somehow seems to make their blocks disappear so that they all blend smoothly into a delicious current, causing the poems to flow, carrying the alluvial affection for Duffy's subject. There are a couple of magical love poems, as well.

[Daniel Kallin · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are great as individual poems (mostly) but, as an anthology, the same themes endlessly repeated become tedious. I also think the initial shock of some of Duffy's imagery does not return on repeat readings because, sure, studying the word "cunt" with my English teacher is an experience, but not the profound poetic kind.

I do love me some asyndetic listing though, that's for sure.

[Noah Broad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really great poems and a healthy amount of pretentiousness for an anthology. Think I would have understood and enjoyed more if I was a woman to be honest.

[tasneem tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh a level english lit required readings you will always be famous.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong, flourishing poetry that is urgently needed.

In this beautiful poetry collection, Carol Ann Duffy takes us on an educational journey on what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society and the burdens it brings with it. There are some extremely empowering and dazzling poems in this collection, such as The Map Woman, Beautiful or The Diet, but also some less stunning ones, such as The Laughter of Stafford Girls' High, which spans near 20 pages and is just tedious to read.
Overall, though, it must be said that Carol Ann Duffy's lyricism flows beautifully across the pages like water and it is a pure joy to read every single line of text.

I loved this poetry collection a lot and I will add it to my staple of feministic recommendations!

[Seren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this! I actually enjoyed poetry which is nice and she’s made me want to read more.

Positives/Favourites:
- The Diet
- The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High
- Anon
- The Long Queen
- Death and the Moon
- A Dreaming Week
- There is something lovely in her work that I just can’t quite put my finger on
- Some poems were 5*!

Not so positives:
- Some of these, for me, were too much
- Some poems, if read in a certain way, could have the opposite effect to what one could assume Duffy was going for
- There were poems that we 1* for me which brought down the overall rating

[Alexandra McKie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some really beautiful poems and lines in here...

"the starlike sorrow of immortal eyes"
"beckoned by the finger of the moon"
"in the heart of the honeyed dark"
"dreaming in the crook of midnight's arm"

...and then there's just some really weird stuff what was The Virgin's Memo??? it just listed a bunch of diseases

[Molly Briers · Rating 1 out of 5]

i mean i dont like poetry but this was a difficult read

[Soraia Ferreira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some poems were really good, some were weird. I'm finding that I'm very specific with the kind of poetry I like to read. Also I'm currently writing my masters thesis so it might not have been the best time to read this. Still, a pleasant read overall.

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good, some a bit naff for analysing. Regardless, all lovely poems. My favourites include: The Map Woman, The Diet, Work, Tall, Loud, White Writing, The Light Gatherer, Wish, and Death and the Moon. My absolute favourite atm is probably Loud.

Some of the language is so graphic it made me cringe, but I think that that was the intention. Also, Duffy uses a lot of profanities to add shock and emphasis which I understand a few people may not like, but I personally think it creates a great tone and really drives her points home, especially when mixed with the eloquence Duffy writes with.

All in all, pretty good, took a while to warm up to, and I'm unsure that I would have understood a lot of the poems if I hadn't been studying it in class.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love love love Carol Ann Duffy, and some poems were beautiful, but most were too abstract or vague. If I read a poem, it doesn't have to be immediately obvious to me what it's about, but I don't want to have to Google the poem to see what the hell is going on. Interesting to read the short story included in this book, but that one only mildly interested me. I prefer other collections - but it's still enjoyable enough to read.

[Cassidy Brinn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Her use of language isn't always painful, but her themes consistently stink. More than half the poems involve fantasies in which a little chick fantastically becomes a grand, huge, important woman. Such idle illusions endanger actual growth.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duffy explores the female: from history (Elizabeth I to Marilyn Monroe) to the beauty of birth and raising a growing child, to some more erotic and sometimes personal poetry. I found the poetry to challenge and entertaining regarding the "female condition."

[ExoDoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this books for my exams in English literature a long time ago.
It was definitely a very good read xx
I reccomed it expecially to the feminist readers out there x
Very well written with powerful messages :)

[megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

there was no option for zero stars :(

[eleanor grey ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, some of the poems were excellent but most of them I didn’t care for 🤷‍♀️

[freya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shit poetry

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Live laugh lesbian ❤️

[teres · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sat down in the library to read some of the books I'd already chosen, but this one caught my eye and attention somehow, sitting on a shelf just to my right. It combined a few of the best things in the world: poetry, poetry written by women & poetrt about women. I read in it one sitting, still at the library, sitting on a worn colourful striped armchair. Feminie Gospels is Duffy's sixth collection of poetry, and features poems with subjects ranging from women in history, lesbian school teachers & Anonymous (who in Virginia Woolf's words was a "woman" - as always, I agree with her). The standouts for me were The Diet, Tall, Loud & The Laughter of Stafford Girl's High. This collection is lyrically written, powerful, beautiful. I am very interested in researching further in how Duffy explains her own poetry and the intent behind them. I wish my brain was advanced enough to understand every poem I read but then again, that would take away a lot of the magic.

O! see my women, the crown

[Liv · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure how to feel about this one, now the third collection of Duffy’s I’ve read. The poems were a mixed bag, some beautiful (especially the more elegiac poems nearer to the end, post ‘The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High’ - itself good but very very long), but some fairly unremarkable. Duffy’s surrealism could be considered a trademark of much of her poetry - something, in the past, I’ve loved, very often being excellent aurally (with both rhythm and rhyme), amplified beyond the real - but I didn’t love all the surrealism here. Some great, but often felt overly on the nose (look! another poem about the female experience!) and repetitive, almost gimmicky (eg The Map-Woman, The Woman Who Shopper). I’d been so looking forward to reading this collection, and while it was definitely not bad by any means, I didn’t love it. Much preferred the poems of ‘The Bees’ and ‘The World’s Wife’ was more fun.

[Grace Tolley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is actually my roman empire. I think about these poems all the time. Carol Ann Duffy is the queen of imagery and extended metaphors. She somehow manages to dress up real women's issues in a way that is equal parts poetic and raw? Love her. Bars.