The bees
Description
A winner of the Costa Book Award, "beautiful and moving poetry for the real world" (The Guardian)The Bees is Carol Ann Duffy's first collection of new poems as British poet laureate, and the much anticipated successor to the T. S. Eliot Prize–winning Rapture. After the intimate focus of the earlier book, The Bees finds Duffy using her full poetic range: there are drinking songs, love poems, poems to the weather, and poems of political anger. There are elegies, too, for beloved friends and—most movingly—for the poet's mother. As Duffy's voice rises in this collection, her music intensifies, and every poem patterns itself into song. Woven into and weaving through the book is its presiding spirit: the bee. Sometimes the bee is Duffy's subject, sometimes it strays into the poem or hovers at its edge—and the reader soon begins to anticipate its appearance. In the end, Duffy's point is clear: the bee symbolizes what we have left of grace in the world, and what is most precious and necessary for us to protect. The Bees is Duffy's clearest affirmation yet of her belief in the poem as "secular prayer," as the means by which we remind ourselves of what is most worthy of our attention and concern, our passion and our praise.
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9780865478084
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Published Reviews
Library Journal Review
In 2009 Duffy was named British poet laureate, a perhaps ponderous title that belies the quicksilver vividness of her poetry. Fittingly, given the title, bees flit throughout this Costa Award-winning collection; they're "freighted/ with light," conjuring "music scored/ on the air," and if "honey is art," then the rarest bee-Duffy's own muse-"made honey so pure,/ when pressed to the pout of a poet/ it made her profound." That busy bee of creativity darts and dives through these richly detailed poems, which often represent the world exhaustively without being anything like standard nature poems. Elsewhere, there are meditations, fiercely felt political poems ("Guantanamo Bay-how many detained?/ How many grains in a sack?"), and the brilliant "Scheherazade," which informs us that "only the silent fail." Throughout, cascades of unadorned, carefully chosen words-"I poured, full spate, roared/ voiced water/ calling you in from dust, thirst, burn," says the Nile-offer a compacted reading experience, generally in slant or internal rhyme that propels the lines forward. Some readers might find the rhyming too insistent, but they energize the poems. VERDICT Duffy makes you look at the world anew; highly recommended.-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Library Journal Reviews
In 2009 Duffy was named British poet laureate, a perhaps ponderous title that belies the quicksilver vividness of her poetry. Fittingly, given the title, bees flit throughout this Costa Award-winning collection; they're "freighted/ with light," conjuring "music scored/ on the air," and if "honey is art," then the rarest bee—Duffy's own muse—"made honey so pure,/ when pressed to the pout of a poet/ it made her profound." That busy bee of creativity darts and dives through these richly detailed poems, which often represent the world exhaustively without being anything like standard nature poems. Elsewhere, there are meditations, fiercely felt political poems ("Guantanamo Bay—how many detained?/ How many grains in a sack?"), and the brilliant "Scheherazade," which informs us that "only the silent fail." Throughout, cascades of unadorned, carefully chosen words—"I poured, full spate, roared/ voiced water/ calling you in from dust, thirst, burn," says the Nile—offer a compacted reading experience, generally in slant or internal rhyme that propels the lines forward. Some readers might find the rhyming too insistent, but they energize the poems. VERDICT Duffy makes you look at the world anew; highly recommended.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
[Page 86]. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.