Standing Female Nude

• Title Poem of her first Collection of poetry: Standing Female Nude

– 1985

PicassoStanding Female Nude

The Grand Nude; 1908Gorges Braque 1892-1963

• Who has more power in this poem?• What is Duffy saying about art?

What is Duffy saying about “ART” other themes?

• Gender and class struggles• Objectification of women• Exploitation of women/artists and

commercialization of art.• She is paid little, the artist’s work is later

sold and resold for millions of dollars.

Think about Power, Gender and class struggles, the male gaze

• Line breaks emphasize ideas, contrasts and juxtapositions.

• Why in the last stanza do we have two one word lines? What do they represent or support?

• Finished… enjambment: line continues just as the work seems to never end.

Tone?

• Cynical tone of a prostitute who poses for money.

• “The bourgeoisie will coo…– Inequality of the classes– She stands for 6 hours for a few francs– Poem ends on the mention of francs also.

Francis Bacon painting breaks new record

• Sold last year for record breaking price of $142,405,000 sold in 6 minutes

Some thoughts on structure• Duffy likes regular lined stanzas• “I found that [Stealing] fell naturally (as

most of my poems do) into regular-lined verses- in this case, 5 5-lined verses. The verses are unrhymed and irregular in meter. These free verses work for me like small canvasses to hold the words of the poem. They help to control the rhythm of the poem… ”

Comments on commentaryCommentaries need to be a a paragraph, not a list of observations. Work on this for the rest.Must be specificSome imagery is used to show ….

Which imagery?

Many of you are not stating how features are used:

Syntax is regular– Why? How does fit poem?

\

Commentary

• Use formal third person • No first person.• Need to focus on literary devices and how

they contribute to the meaning of the poem.

Commentary continued

• Commentaries should have a thesis:• How does author +verb+ lit. feature+

verb+lit. effect + why.

• In the poem Mrs. Aesop, Carol Ann Duffy uses a sarcastic tone and humorous allusions to Aesop’s Fables to show the wife’s discontent in her marriage and to depict her husband as an unoriginal bore.

• Don’t refer to persona in poem as

narrator. It is a speaker

• Avoid empty phrases: It seems to me, in my opinion, interesting to note. They don’t add to commentary. They only take up space.

“I have no choice.” Different interpretations here, but the artist might mean 1. needs $. 2. must paint because he loves it. It is what he does

Good comments

• The phrase “Belly nipple arse” lacks punctuation which shows that she is being looked at as an overall item, not for her individual attributes.

• This enjambment creates a broken rhythm to the poem that relates to the poverty of the model.

Student Thesis

• Duffy uses a lack of punctuation, a cynical tone, and enjambment to illustrate the deception behind the ideals of art; it is not a free, truthful medium, but rather a business and industry in which the subjects have little power to define themselves.

Commentary on Poems

Comments on commentaryCommentaries need to be a a paragraph, not a list of observations. Work on this for the rest.Must be specificSome imagery is used to show ….

Which imagery?

Many of you are not stating how features are used:

Syntax is regular– Why? How does fit poem?

\

Commentary

• Use formal third person • No first person.• Need to focus on literary devices and how

they contribute to the meaning of the poem.

Commentary continued

• Commentaries should have a thesis:• How does author +verb+ lit. feature+

verb+lit. effect + why.

• In the poem Mrs. Aesop, Carol Ann Duffy uses a sarcastic tone and humorous allusions to Aesop’s Fables to show the wife’s discontent in her marriage and to depict her husband as an unoriginal bore.

• Don’t refer to persona in poem as

narrator. It is a speaker

• Avoid empty phrases: It seems to me, in my opinion, interesting to note. They don’t add to commentary. They only take up space.

“I have no choice.” Different interpretations here, but the artist might mean 1. needs $. 2. must paint because he loves it. It is what he does

Good comments

• The phrase “Belly nipple arse” lacks punctuation which shows that she is being looked at as an overall item, not for her individual attributes.

• This enjambment creates a broken rhythm to the poem that relates to the poverty of the model.

Student Thesis

• Duffy uses a lack of punctuation, a cynical tone, and enjambment to illustrate the deception behind the ideals of art; it is not a free, truthful medium, but rather a business and industry in which the subjects have little power to define themselves.