Pluto - Duffy

Content + themes

Follows an old man recalling the naming of the newly discovered planet, Pluto, when he was a child. He recalls his initial excitement at the discovery, followed by a subsequent sense of loss upon the contemplation of his gone-by youth

Themes: Time, memory, loneliness,

Key techniques

Modernism - juxtaposition past and present

Indented stanzas

Synaesthesia

Metaphor - Ha'pennies

Context

Pluto is a dwarf planet, initially named the most distant in our solar system. It is isolate, remote and alienated

Repeated synaesthesia throughout the poem reflects Duffy's personal interest in the philosophy of language and how meaning is created through a system of 'signs' which contain sensations

modernist technique - juxtaposition between past and present

"When I awoke//a brand new planet"

Poem starts off with the use of past tense - demonstrating how the past takes precedence over the present. Reflects the speaker's desire and longing for his past

"brand new" evokes a sense of freshness, mirroring the speaker in his youth

Two indented stanzas

Show conflict between the past and the present, reflect the distance between Pluto and earth which is akin to the distance between past and present

"same soap"

Synaesthesia to demonstrate sensory transportation back to the past. The speaker's memory is the only tether he has to his past

"brown coins of age on my face the size of ha'pennies"

Duffy uses metaphor "brown coins of age" to offer a physical depiction of the speaker's skin, which has withered with age however the mention of "ha'pennies", an outdated form of currency, could also reflect the speaker's inability to separate himself from his past

Alternatively, the speaker may be viewing himself as worthless, just like outdated currency which loses its value

"i cry out now in my bath"

Reader presented with the jarring contrast of the speaker's memories, in which he was a boy engaging with a world full of possibility, to his reality, in which he is an isolated old man crying out in his bath.

Duffy employs the modernist technique of a juxtaposition between past and present to evoke sympathy from the reader

"to think of another world out there//in the dark//unreachable"

The distance to Pluto mirrors the distance to his past. It is "unreachable" like his past

Line breaks in last stanza reflect his mental fragmentation

"shocked and bereaved again//half-hearing my father's laugh"

he is not only mourning his family, he is also mourning his past, in which he was "a boy."

Synaesthesia in "half-hearing" once again demonstrates a painful merging of the past and present. His father is not physically there, yet his brain conjures up his laugh. Memory as painful, makes him "cry out"