Carol Ann Duffy - Wintering

Intro
1. about relationship plagued with arguments
2. Purpose: question love and its meanings
3. Creates sympathy for speaker by metaphors of nature and seasons
  1. sense of never ending damaging cyclical path of relationship
    1. highlighted by poem split into three parts
Imagery
1. connote death and darkness
  1. through this, shows relationship is in cycle of repeated emotional breakdown
    1. "slow funerals have ploughed the rain"
      1. "funerals" - mourning and ending
      2. "plough" - sow new seeds, new life. contrasts imagery of death
    2. "I wear a shroud of cold"
      1. "shroud" reminds readers of death and corpses
    3. "grey fades to black"
      1. things have got worse
      2. "grey" - gloomy days, motif of nature creating cyclical structure
      3. "black" - night
2. Start of poem heavy focus on negativity
Undermining romantic symbols
1. "the stars begin their lies"
  1. "stars" - wishes/hope/romantic
  2. undermined by "begin their lies"
2. "Night clenches in its fist the moon, a stone."
  1. verb "clenches" and noun "fist" violent connotations; anger
  2. "moon" romantic, undermined by being a "stone", cold and hard.
3. "Dawn mocks me with a gibberish of birds"
  1. "dawn" - fresh start but shows hasn't happened as mocking
  2. birdsong usually pleasant but described as "gibberish"
Form
1. in each tercet, middle line shorter, and contains one clause
  1. "has wept its leaves", "all my mistakes", "the sky is flayed"
  2. creates sudden and striking caesurae, representing how relationship is broken
  3. Alternatively emphasises isolation as couple not in contact with each other (writer holding "small stiff body of my phone")
2. Split into three parts
  1. First focuses on raw conflict
  2. Second on tension and nervousness
  3. third on resolution
Conclusion
1. end of poem shows how argument has been resolved
  1. reader told of a "hidden freight" which "shifts" the dynamic of attitude of writer
  2. past tense "what has been" juxtaposed with future, "what will be", emphasising how it is in the past
  3. final stanza filled with sibilant sounds, and words with closed vowel sounds, emphasising how fight is over
  4. words from start of poem contrasted with words from end
    1. "grey" - "green" "rain" - "light"
    2. "love to pain" from pain to love as "winter thaws and melts"
      1. paralleling relationship to seasons through lexical choices
  5. half rhyme ("lies" with "lose") when relationship broken, full rhyme ("this" with "kiss") when harmonious

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Carol Ann Duffy - Wintering

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