Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/45206

In Carol Ann Duffy's first four collections, desire is rarely a beneficent force. For Duffy, selfhood and self-awareness involve a sense of original exile, so the self is fundamentally directed towards completion by the other. Although full communion is impossible, that contact is required to repel the anguished vulnerability experienced in its absence. For Duffy's speakers, rather than effecting the state where the self reaches fulfilment and full expression, desire is disempowering and actively productive of alienation. Her speakers describe fear of engulfment and the evanescence of rapture, as well as how desire can gain value from self-abnegation, or the subjugation of the other. Duffy's poems take up the complex interaction of illusion, trust and linguistic inadequacy in relationships, while in terms of form, the use of first-person lyrics and the dramatic monologue provides the opportunity for close contact, but self-revelation is frequently bound up with evasion.