Blog Post #5

Since I am basing my final project on the works of poet Carol Ann Duffy (page 333), I thought I would write a blog post about my favorite piece of hers, titled "Litany."  This poem has been one of my favorites throughout the entire semester, and it has been the inspiration for my final project.  This poem describes in detail a scene of poised women, starting out slow-paced at first.  This slow pace allows the reader to carefully build up the scene and visualize it in their head, and then be surprised by the last stanza. The last stanza is where the shock value occurs.  "A boy in the playground, I said, told me/ to fuck off; and a thrilled, malicious pause/ salted my tongue like an imminent storm."  The use of the speaker describing the silence as "thrilled" makes it seem as if the young girl knew that her comment would cause an uproar.  This reaction of her mother and her mother's friends' was intentional; the young girl says it to see how exactly they would react.  I can picture this little girl's appearance to be looking like an innocent little girl wearing a fluffy dress, and her mother's friends are just as surprised of what comes out of her mouth as the reader is.  I also noticed that there is no reaction of the women to how rude the boy in the playground acted to the little girl, she is simply punished for repeating a dirty word.  She is the one to apologize to the women, rather than the boy having to apologize , which is in fact the person who started it all.