000			02068n a2200253 a 4500
001			067538
005			20231009193448.0
008			140401s2000 nyu 000 0 eng
010			_a99087010
020			_a9780571199952
050	0	0	_aPR6054.U38 _bW6 2000
082	0	0	_a821.914 DUF
100	1		_aDuffy, Carol Ann
245	1	4	_aThe world's wife _b: poems _c/ Carol Ann Duffy.
250			_a1st ed.
260			_aNew York _b: Faber and Faber _c, 2000.
300			_a76 p. _c; 22 cm.
520			_aThe voices of Mrs. Tiresias, Mrs. Faust, Mrs. Quasimodo and other wives wittily recast myth and history from a woman's point of view in the pages of Manchester-based Duffy's fifth collection. Self-contained Penelope is not waiting for her Odysseus; frustrated Mrs. Sisyphus is married to a workaholic; Pygmalion's statue, tired of being pestered by her groping suitor, "changed tack/ grew warm, like candle wax/ kissed back"--and after sex gets dumped. But while Duffy's revisionist dramatic monologues are rife with clever twists, this material has been well mined by such poets as Alta, Margaret Atwood, and Alicia Ostriker. Even references to Viagra, sheep-cloning, and Monica Lewinsky seem an updating of Transformations (1971), Anne Sexton's deadpan fairy tales studded with cultural references, with the poems trapped in a similarly polarized conception of gender relations. Thus Thetis is brutalized in a new way each time she changes form--man is cross-bow to her albatross, charmer to her snake, fisherman to her mermaid--and to Queen Herod, the Christ child is simply a threat to her infant girl: he's "The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake. The Rat./The Heartbreaker. The Ladykiller. Mr. Right." The luckiest in love is Mrs. Beast, married to a devoted creature that's hung like a mule, and just as hardworking: "And if his snot and trotters fouled/ my damask sheets, why, then, he'd wash them. Twice."
586			_aPoet Laureate, United Kingdom
650		0	_aMarried women _v--Poetry
650		4	_aWomen _x-Poetry
650		4	_aEnglish poetry
942			_cMO
999			_c272177 _d272177