In Raptures

It says something for the lackadaisical pace of my reading that I'm only now coming to the final volumes of some books of poetry I bought almost a full year ago. Well, not exactly 'bought'. Said volumes were purchased with some of the book vouchers I got for my talk for the annual Literature Seminar done by the Gifted Education people at MOE. I gave away about half the vouchers to Fafa and Fifi on the grounds that we have no room on the shelves for a whole raft of new books but it seemed appropriate to purchase a few thin volumes of the stuff I'd been talking about.

Anyway, two of the collections were by Carol Ann Duffy. I'd always enjoyed the odd poem here and there I'd seen by her, I was aware of her acquiring a stellar reputation, I like the idea of poets who consciously write for children as well as adults, and when she was appointed Poet Laureate I'd felt embarrassed I didn't know her work in any kind of detail since I am supposed to know something about poetry - being invited to give talks and all. So buying at least a little something seemed a bit of an imperative.

The first of the two I read, last year, Mean Time was a bit of a disappointment. I think I was expecting a bit too much, or had an impression of a kind of writer that Duffy isn't but which I wanted her to be - a sort of English version of Billy Collins. This is not to say I didn't get anything out of the book. But now I don't remember anything vividly from it, the test of an immediate impact. Having said that, I'm quite happy at the idea I'll revisit it soon. That's the way it is with poetry, of course. It so often needs time to grow. Goodness, it took me forty years to start to genuinely respond to Lycidas.

But I've just finished the second of the collections I bought last year, Rapture, and in this case the impact was powerful and immediate. If you want to read an electric, exhilarating account of the madness of falling in love, this is it. The problem is, though, that this is a book you need to read when you're capable of that kind of craziness. I'm thankful that I'm not anymore, but it's oddly stirring and disturbing to be reminded of some of those feelings. There's something adolescent about the poems in the best possible sense - the sense in which we need to retain that aspect of ourselves, that extraordinary generosity of feeling, as Keats did.