The World's Wife: Poems

One of our teachers handed a copy of The World’s Wife to a student like it was a banned book. That student passed it to me with the same energy someone uses when sharing a playlist that might unlock your soul. Spoiler: it kinda did. This book is a collection of poems and stories told from the women behind the legends — wives, lovers, mythic icons, and goddesses who are done being background characters. You’ll hear from Medusa, Eurydice, Queen Herod, Mrs. Midas, and a whole crew of women with razor-sharp wit and zero time for being silenced. The tone? Think Shakespeare meets feminist Twitter with a literary twist. It’s the kind of book you leave out to provoke conversations and low-key judge your guests’ taste. If they get it, they stay. If they don’t, that’s your cue. Highly recommend for readers who like their poetry with punchlines and power plays.

This book is the running definition of ‘female gaze’ in literature. Duffy takes stories like the raising of Lazarus, or the fall of Icarus, or even Shakespeare’s bestowment of his ‘second best bed’ to his wife, and retells them from a female perspective. In other poems, she transforms male-oriented stories to female: Pope Joan and Queen Kong being examples. And within this premise, she examines the one-sided puritanical attitudes of relationships, the demonization of female biology, and strikes at the literary patriarchy with humor and devastating seriousness. This is a lovely collection that wisely avoids striking the same note over and over but instead varies from control (ie, Eurydice WANTING Orpheus to turn and look and free her), to sexuality (Little Red Riding Hood as sexual awakening) to a dismay at the male animal (Sisyphus’s wife agog at her husband’s persistence). Quite the collection.

Carol Ann Duffy's poetry is provocative and entertaining.

In "The World's Wife," Duffy deftly reworks tales from myths, fables, the bible, popular culture, literature and history. Some popular stories are reexamined through the eyes of a female witness, as with "Pilate's Wife," "Mrs. Darwin, " "Mrs. Sisyphus" and "Anne Hathaway." Others are modernized; In "Mrs. Faust," Faust and his wife are a pair of yuppies collecting degrees, computers and cell phones. A few stories, like "Queen Kong", are reimagined with a female protagonist replacing the male. The poetry is as diverse as the personae, with voices ranging from lingering, dreamy and dramatic to hard, clipped and succinct. The World's Wife lets previously unheard women speak. Their voices are not always what readers expect from a lyric speaker, for how often is deep emotion examined through rhyming slang for tits, or the nicknames for a penis? Yet when Duffy calls a modern wife frustrated by her husband's discovery of Viagra "Mrs. Rip Van Winkle," or a contemporary-voiced woman whose husband works mindlessly and ceaselessly "Mrs. Sisyphus," Duffy reveals that their personal struggles are not theirs alone. Their troubles have resonance, and echo through history, literature and myth---even though in the past it may have been left unspoken.

I really liked this book by Duffy. She essentially takes tons of popular stories featuring a male lead/perspective and she tells the tale from a woman's perspective, most often the wife, in a poem structure. There is humor, there is suspense, there is sadness. It's a great collection of poems. I used this book in one of my college courses and I ended up really liking the whole book. It's a slim book so it's not too heavy and it's not too little either. I would definitely recommend this book.

As volumes of poetry go, The World's Wife is very tightly-themed: each poem is a monologue in the persona of a woman married (or otherwise attached) to a more famous man. The men are more usually from myth or fairy tale (Mrs Sisyphus, Mrs Beast) than from history, although five are biblical and one or two are from history as recent as the 1960s (I think The Devil's Wife may be a portrait of Myra Hindley). Duffy's approach to these monologues is almost absolutely consistent: the women express contempt, irritation, resentment and sorrow for the foolishness and egotism of their partners. Mrs Quasimodo desecrates her husband's beloved bells by fouling them with her own urine; both Penelope and Mrs Lazarus are discomfited by their husbands' return; Mrs Tiresias seeks solace in lesbianism. Only occasionally (as with Anne Hathaway) does the wife feel real love for her husband. The subject-matter, thus paraphrased, looks gloomy and bitter, but in fact these poems are entertaining and very likeable. It is quite important to these pieces that they are funny - and we do laugh because of the constantly-perceived clash between lofty, remote, sacred men and contemporary-sounding, slangy, immediate women. Duffy's language is exactly right for her project. Rhythmically it is strongly pulsing; even more important is the function of rhyme and half-rhyme (the latter perhaps this poet's single-most impressive talent). Reinforcing the wilful, aggressive quality of the rhetoric is Duffy's aptitude for witty puns involving cliches and hackneyed figures of speech (Eurydice is 'out of this world'). At the same time, however, the language is kept aerated and three-dimensional by beautiful off-the-cuff metaphors ('a snapdragon gargling a bee'). I think all this is extremely well-judged poetry; it is rich and confident and if it lacks subtlety, irony or mysteriousness, that is in the nature of its unusually rhetorical mission.

Bought as a requested Christmas gift. Recipient enjoyed the book.

IT's such a fun read, and Carol Ann has made it easy to think like a feminist and a poet. Great work.

The book was in excellent shape. The poems are very entertaining and beautifully written.

Women will surely relate to these wonderful poems. If you understand the historical and mythical allusions, they are great. My husband did not find them as funny I did (I was laughing out loud late at night and insisted on reading them to him first thing in the morning!) I guess some of them could be interpreted as anti-men, but I think Ms Duffy is simply redressing the balance here and pointing out a in a good-natured way that behind every famous man, there was often an unsung heroine.

Just got this a couple days ago, it's in our programm in high school. Haven't analysed a lot of the poems yet, but the ones we have i definitely enjoyed very much. Very witty, original, and beautifully unique!! Demeter is probably my favorite.

Good

Wer Gedichte mag und obendrein des Englischen mächtig ist, sollte Carol Ann Duffy kennenlernen. Die Autorin ist Poet Laureate, also Britische Hof-Dichterin - ein Titel, der früher in England auf Lebenszeit verliehen wurde, jetzt jedoch nur für 10 Jahre gilt. Duffy ist die erste Frau, die diesen Titel innehat, und auch der erste Poet Laureate mit schottischen Wurzeln. Den Gedichtband durchzieht ein roter Faden: die Gedichte handeln von bekannten Frauengestalten und den Frauen/Geliebten berühmter Männer. Besonders hervorzuheben sind "Mrs Midas", "Queen Kong" und "Medusa" (zumindest wirbelten die Bilder, die die Gedichte heraufbeschworen noch lange nach dem Lesen in meinem Kopf herum). Viele von Duffys Gedichten gleichen kleinen Geschichten. Geistreich, pointiert, oft frech und durchaus kritisch, dabei nicht verschwurbelt. Duffys Gedichte geben sich zugänglich und gar nicht abgehoben (und sind damit gut für den Fremdsprachenunterricht geeignet). Duffy lässt Lyrik leicht aussehen, und dieser Band macht Appetit auf mehr! Dieser Band wurde 1999 zum ersten Mal aufgelegt - die aktuelle Ausgabe ist sehr schön aufgemacht und passt gut zu anderen Gedichtbänden der Autorin.