I'm finding the Carol Ann Duffy thread intriguing.
I picked up her Selected this past year, & her work was included in the
anthology I was using in a course. It was interesting, some students loved
her work, some hated it, the latter usually people with an investment in,
what shall I call it, traditional values?
That quote was included in the introduction to her work, but alas, I don't
have it at hand. Given that Heaney is also a major figure in the anthology,
I suspect that waas the reason for its inclusion. My sense of her work,
which I rather enjoyed, was that she loves to play with dramatic monologue,
to use 'ordinary language' in such a way as to reveal its hidden
ideological biases, and for satiric effect.
As to how I evaluate her work, well the jury is still out. What she does
she does well, but it does have its limits. On the other hand, as an
introduction to a kind of feminist revisioning of various conventional ways
of thinking & seeing, it has a strong effect.
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
the way of what fell
the lies
like the petals
falling drop
delicately
Phyllis Webb
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