Compare and contrast Carol Ann Duffys treatment of love and language in the poems You, Text and Name

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Compare and contrast Carol Ann Duffy’s treatment of love and language in the poems You, Text and Name

Carol Ann Duffy’s love poem, You, is about her love for a man. The poem expresses the poet’s love for the man, and emphasises the fact that he doesn’t know about it until the end, where she [the poet] finds the man on her bed.

The first word of the first line of the first stanza is uninvited, which is then followed by: “the thought of you stayed too late in my head”. This suggests that she didn’t welcome the feeling, but instead it overcame her. The line suggests she has been thinking about him a lot, followed by the rest of the stanza which further implements this idea by saying she goes to bed, dreaming of him and then waking with his name at her lips. In this stanza, the poet also talks about the man’s name. She shows interest in it, and makes note of the “bright syllables” of it. This shows she is interested in not only expressing her love for the man but also the language.

The second stanza is slightly different – we’ve established she has feelings for him, so now she goes on to talk about what feeling in love is like. The poet writes “glamorous hell” – this summarises love for her. It tells us that although she likes herself being there, she doesn’t like the feeling of uncertainty and insecurity.

The third stanza continues talking about Duffy’s love for the man, and how she secretly watched him as he came into sight – “You sprawled in my gaze”. Then, we come to the fourth stanza. This stanza writes about the poet walking into the bedroom and seeing the man she dreams about “on the bed”.

The poet has played with many poetic techniques in order to express the very personal subject of love.

We see on the second line, the poet says “dreaming you hard, hard,” which is later contrasted by the third line with, “like tears, soft”.  This contrast helps add meaning to the actions she is doing. She says she is dreaming him hard – “hard” being an adjective which emphasises how she is dreaming. Then, later on, “like tears, soft, salt, on my lips” which once again is to do with the man’s name she is interested in.

Later on within the same stanza, Duffy uses two similes next to each other – “like a charm, like a spell.” Using these similes helps us relate to what she is feeling, but they’re also to do with Duffy’s interest in the man’s name. Obviously we would not say someone’s name was like a charm or a spell if we weren’t in love with them, and so these similes further assert the emotion of love she is feeling.

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The second stanza starts with “Falling in love”. The line starts two line breaks down from where the sentence would start if it was part of stanza two. This positioning reflects the content – the text has fallen, just as she has fallen in love.

“Glamorous hell” is an oxymoron – there is no way hell can be glamorous. No one can really understand the feeling of falling in love until they have experienced it, so this oxymoron is a fantastic way to help us understand what she is going through.

The letter ‘l’ is repeated ...

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