Today I got you to write a literature essay on “A Patchwork Planet” in class – in two weeks’ time, after all, it’s the start of the prelim. Remember that you have to write 2 essays in an hour and a half.Homework is 2006 Close Reading passage 1 on obesity.
The only other thing we covered in this class was Carol Ann Duffy’s “Valentine”, a mainly very unromantic view of love. Though it’s in free verse (ie unrhymed and with irregular rhythm) it does have a structure, pivoting round the central “I am trying to be truthful”. We noticed that the first half is similar in many ways to the second half, but that the second half is extremely unromantic and indeed quite sinister, with the word “Lethal” suggesting the deadly nature of the offered love (if it’s later spurned?) and the last word lingering uneasily in the memory: “knife”. The poem’s effect depends largely on its imagery - mainly about the onion - and that balanced structure that we noticed. Do bear in mind that the “voice” isn’t necessarily that of Duffy herself – she’s not known for killing her former lovers, despite her rather gloomy appearance.
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