What choices does Carol Ann Duffy make in Valentine to make the poem interesting?

'Its platinum hoops shrink to a wedding ring.' (A metaphor of marriage also the onion contains a series of rings inside it)

Another choice that CAD makes is to make the layout and the rhyme of the poem very abnormal and abstract (there is no rhyme, and some very short single word sentences.) This could because of several reasons;

* CAD's reinforcing the fact that the poems abstract and unconventional.

* CAD's trying to show the fact that love can be abstract.

* CAD's making a point that like a symbol of love poetry doesn't have to stick to set and excepted patterns.

* CAD's trying to show that like the poem, which seems fragmented, love can be stopping and starting.

* CAD's showing that the poems random by having small sentences then some fairly long ones.

CAD has chosen to refer to some of the senses in the poem the to it refers to most is sight (It will blind you with tears, A wobbling photo.) this may be mocking the cliché 'Love at first sight.' Or it may be that in CAD's opinion sight is the most important sense when referring to love.

Throughout the poem there are references to violence ('blind you', 'Fierce', 'lethal', 'cling to your knife') this could be because Carol Ann Duffy is trying to show the correlation between love and violence also as the Main reference ('cling to your knife') is at the end of the poem this may have a connection with possible violence at the end of a relationship. It may also be trying to bring through a sense of love being powerful this is backed up by the way powerful language is used throughout the poem e.g. 'possessive, faithful', promises light'.

The poem is a one-sided conversation or possible in a letter, it seems to be written as though CAD had given an onion to someone she loved as a token of her affection. You can see this form the way she says 'I give YOU and onion.' This makes it seem that the reader is reading something that is not necessarily aimed at them.