Critical Quotes - Feminine Gospels

Antony-Rowland

"Feminine Gospels chooses for the most part to ignore men and focus on fairy-tale stories."

Feinstein (moving on)

"The readiness to move on is intoxicating".

Deryn-Reese Jones (identity)

"Knowing who you are and finding a way to tell ourselves are two of Duffy's central concerns".

Mendelson (sadness of real world)

"It is the sadness of the real world that gives her words weight"

Hornbacher

"We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need"

Kennedy

"Her poetry emerges as an interrogation of contemporary culture"

Feinstein (details)

"Sometimes the gritty details make a familiar point surprising"

Elizabeth O'Reilly (serious + humorous)

"Both serious and humorous" and "incorporates humour with serious insights and social commentary".

Deryn-Reese Jones (difficulty of patriarchy)

Moves beyond "a straightforward feminist poetry" and shows "the difficulty that patriarchy presents to both men and women".

Elizabeth O'Reilly (angry, political etc.)

"Angry, political, elegiac [...], witty, nakedly honest, accessible, mysterious"

O'Riordan

"Examines love in many forms"

Kellaway

"Love is an extremity, only rivalled by death. And desire is almost a death wish."

Duffy (prayers)

"I feel... that all poetry is a prayer"

Boland

"Challenges and alters power relationships by making women both the subject and object of love poems"

Elizabeth O'Reilly (meaning and reality)

"Explores the way in which meaning and reality are constructed through language"

Duffy (simple words)

"I like to use simple words but in a complicated way"

Feinstein (playful techniques)

"Making use of ebullient street talk, off rhythm rhymes and internal echoes"

Duffy (motherhood)

"...having a child was a revolutionary experience for me..."

Brown

"If love has always been at the centre of her poetry, this is not only romantic and sexual, it is also both daughterly and maternal".

Michael J. Woods (time)

"Duffy's poems explore how time is inevitably cruel"

Jody Allen-Randolph

"Failure, loneliness, isolation and emptiness haunt her poems"

Critic

"The poems are rich with regret"

Feinstein (prayers)

Poems near end of the collection are "prayer-like" and "intense with feeling"