the Duffy challenge

no surprises there then....

I seem particularly apt at not surprising you of late, Liana.

apt??

i think it might be a new fangled student abbreviation of adept liana ... makes you feel so past it eh?

mmmm yes... was always short for appropriate i thought.

apt from the latin adjective aptus, past participle of apisci. suspect Hen is using it in its sense of 'having a tendency to, likely'. appropriate from appropriare i would imagine.

well blow me down with a feather...... latin again....

Maximus elitus cockium headios.

*blows Liana down with a feather* what, Doleman, for using a dictionary? well, i suppose it might have been elitist once - in the days of Dr Johnson when there weren't that many of them around.

Ack.. It's an unintentional hybrid. I meant to use 'apt' in the sense that Chant suggests (not that great at Latin, but I have heard it used in that sense recently, by Rokkitnite no less, and so was up for re-using it,) but I got caught up in the sentence structure of 'I seem particularly adept at'

oh my god, i'm so torn on this one. larkin was my life, so the perfect poet, should have been poet laureate and the rest of it ... this be the verse, still my second favourite poet of all time. but duffy - since the thread that i started - and during which i argued for larkin - i have changed. i love duffy. she's entertained me so much; made me see what i am capable of; made me see life beyond iambic pentameter; her poems are so funny, clever, true; am i rambling? bit pissed. cheers phil. you started this. cheers carol ann, you finished it. good night.

Nice one Paul... thats really cheered me up this morning.

i wonder if that affects the copyright laws....... perhaps all her fans could post you hundreds of her poems instead? No? Just an idea.

well that would certainly save me having to buy a copy of her latest book. good idea!

Oh i cant promise that theyd all be from her latest book.... there are several after all..

as no convincing defence has been produced for the Duffy woman, i am pronouncing Larkin to be the better poet. case closed.

Pfffff....

what Liana is trying to say here is: "pffff....alright i agree, Larkin *is* the better poet - there's that excellent poem 'Deceptions' for example, which is miles better than anything she's done!" Deceptions "Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable, and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt." --Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor Even so distant, I can taste the grief, Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp. The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief Worry of wheels along the street outside Where bridal London bows the other way, And light, unanswerable and tall and wide, Forbids the scar to heal, and drives Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day, Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives. Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare Console you if I could. What can be said, Except that suffering is exact, but where Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic? For you would hardly care That you were less deceived, out on that bed, Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair To burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.

I suspect that that is not what Liana was trying to say in the slightest bit :-) Here are two of Duffy's poems. The reason they are brilliant is self evident, is it not? Free Verse: Recognition. © C A D Things get away from one. I've let myself go, I know. Children? I've had three and don't even know them. I strain to remember a time when my body felt lighter. Years. My face is swollen with regrets. I put powder on, but it flakes off. I love him, through habit, but the proof has evaporated. He gets upset. I tried to do all the essentials on one trip. Foolish, yes, but I was weepy all morning. Quiche. A blond boy swung me up in his arms and promised the earth. You see, this came back to me as I stood on the scales. I wept. Shallots. In the window, creamy ladies held a pose which left me clogged and old. The waste. I'd forgotten my purse, fumbled; the shopgirl gaped at me, compassionless. Claret. I blushed. Cheese. Kleenex. IT DID HAPPEN. I lay in my slip in wet grass, laughing. Years. I had to rush out, blind in a hot flush, and bumped into an anxious dowdy matron who touched the cold mirror and stared at me. Stared and said I'm sorry sorry sorry. And for the traditionalists; War Photographer © C.A. D In his darkroom he is finally alone with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows. The only light is red and softly glows, as though this were a church and he a priest preparing to intone a Mass. Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass. He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays beneath his hands which did not tremble then though seem to now. Rural England. Home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel, to fields which don't explode beneath the feet of running children in a nightmare heat. Something is happening. A stranger's features faintly start to twist before his eyes a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries of this man's wife, how he sought approval without words to do what someone must and how blood stained into foreign dust. A hundred agonies in black-and-white from which his editor will pick out five or six for Sunday's supplement. The reader's eyeballs prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers. From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns his living and they do not care. Both stunning poems.

Well, I prefer Larkin - those two Duffy's go under the category of 'good poems', which is a category full of worthiness, and also full to the brim with 99% of the poems I read and a vast array of poets. I'm fed up with good poets, really. I like Larkin because in some respects he's a bad poet - where's the sublime subtlety in the line, "a bosomy English rose and her friends in specs I could talk to"? Where's the accute depiction of a failing relationship in "someone else feeling her breasts and cnut"? As a young man fed up with every bleeding author and poet being 'one of Britain's foremost writers,' 'witty, savage and brilliantly economic', 'mesmerisingly bringing the page to life', Larkin is one of the few readily available poets who is immediately distinctive and seriously funny (you can't get Leonard Cohen in Waterstones,) - he also pulls the trick of making a poem not look like a poem - not a pretty picture, elegant and slim, but a flabby old puspile of text, a farting, curmudgeonly waste of space that no old lady would want cross-stitched to their wall. It might also be because I was never forced to study him.

good Hen. *gives Hen a liquorice allsort* now run off and do the psychological test in the General Forum.