Valentine
-Carol Ann Duffy
Carol
Ann Duffy (born 1955) is a Scottish poet. She was born in 1955. She is
currently the UK’s first female (and
first Scottish) Poet Laureate. She wrote poetry from an early age,
and was first published at the age of 15. She has since written plays, critical
works, and several volumes of poetry. Her poetry has been the subject of
controversy. She follows in the poetic tradition of Robert Browning.
Duffy’s poetry
is often feminist in its themes and approach. Her collection The
World’s Wife took characters from history, literature and mythology
and gave them a female point of view, as a sister, a wife or a feminized
version of a character
The poem “Valentine”
is written in free verse. Each stanza is very
short, and several are only one line long. The poem is a first
person narrative. Valentine describes
a gift for a lover, such as you would give on Valentine’s Day. It is a rather
unusual present – an onion. The poem explains why it is a powerful gift of
love, much more than the clichéd roses or box of chocolates. The poem is about
love as well as Valentine gifts.
Valentine begins with a mixture of grand
romantic imagery – the metaphor of the "moon" – and the
everyday – the "brown paper" the moon is wrapped in. The
very first stanza of the poem dismisses the clichéd, normal gifts of love,
indicating that this will be a different kind of valentine.
There is a
strong sense of danger in the imagery of the poem. The onion
will "blind you with tears", which is a comparison – using a
simile – to what a lover will do, and even in affection there is a sense of
danger in its "fierce kiss". This culminates in the single word
sentence in the middle of the final stanza: "Lethal". This is
emphasized by the fact that the final word of the poem
is "knife". There is a sense that love can be dangerous, perhaps
in its possessiveness.
This is
reflected in the idea that light is promised by the "careful
undressing of love" – you must be careful with love to get its
benefit, just as you must be careful with the onion. Throughout the poem the
onion is a metaphor for love, developed in different ways. There is also an
ambiguity in the poem as to whether "it" refers to the onion
or to love
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