Rapture (poetry collection)

Rapture is a collection of poetry written by the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, the British poet laureate from 2009 to 2019. It marks her 37th work of poetry and has been described as "intensely personal, emotional and elegiac, and markedly different from Duffy’s other works" by the British Council.[1] Rapture was first published in 2005 in the UK by Picador, and in 2013 in the US, by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.[2]

Rapture
Front Cover of Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy
AuthorCarol Ann Duffy
LanguageEnglish
GenrePoetry
PublisherPicador
Publication date
2005
Pages85
ISBN9781466895867

Rapture received the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize.

Synopsis

Rapture follows the narrator through a love story. It begins with falling in love. “Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables, like a charm, like a spell.”[2] Later on, the tone of the book shifts from head over heels in love to brokenhearted. “The garden tenses, lies face down, bereaved, has wept its leaves.The Latin names of plants blur like belief. I walk on ice, it grimaces, then breaks. All my mistakes are frozen in the tight lock of my face. Bare trees hold out their arms, beseech, entreat, cannot forget. The clouds sag with the burden of their weight. The wind screams at the house, bitter, betrayed. The sky is flayed, the moon a fingernail, bitten and frayed.” [3]

Themes

The main themes of Rapture are love, loss, loneliness, gender issues, and death.

Reception

Critical reception for Rapture has been positive. In a review for The Guardian Margaret Reynolds praised Duffy's lyrical voice and her attention to repetition and wordplay, stating "Reading about an affair is not supposed to have the same effect. But it does in the case of Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture."[4] In his review for The New York Times William Logan focused on Duffy's language, comparing her work to Auden and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.[5] The Rumpus also praised Duffy's writing and wrote that "In Rapture, surprises land like a lover’s touch and scribble on your skin, right off the page".[6]

Rapture is studied as part of the OCR (EMC) A-Level qualification in English Language and Literature, across schools and colleges in England.

Awards

References
  1. "Carol Ann Duffy - Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  2. Duffy, Carol Ann (2005). Rapture : poems. Recorded Books, Inc. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 6. ISBN 9781466895867. OCLC 966079995.
  3. Duffy, Carol Ann (2005). Rapture. London: Picador. pp. 46–47. ISBN 9781466895867.
  4. Reynolds, Margaret (7 January 2006). "Review: Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  5. Logan, William (11 April 2013). "Heart's Desire". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 24 June 2019.
  6. Miller-Mack, Ellen (23 August 2013). "Rapture By Carol Ann Duffy". The Rumpus. Retrieved 24 June 2019.
  7. "TS Eliot Prize | Special Reports | guardian.co.uk Books". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 June 2019.
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