''Rapture'' is a collection of poetry written by the Scottish poet

Carol Ann Duffy Dame Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first ...

, the British poet laureate from 2009 to 2019. It marks her 37th work of poetry and has been described as "intensely personal, emotional and elegiac, and markedly different from Duffy’s other works" by the British Council. ''Rapture'' was first published in 2005 in the UK by Picador, and in 2013 in the US, by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ''Rapture'' received the 2005

T.S. Eliot Prize The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is a prize that was, for many years, awarded by the Poetry Book Society (UK) to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Priz ...

Synopsis

''Rapture'' follows the narrator through a love story. It begins with falling in love.'' “ ''Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables, like a charm, like a spell.”'' ''Later on, the tone of the book shifts from head over heels in love to brokenhearted.''"'' The garden tenses, lies face down, bereaved, has wept its leaves.The Latin names of plants blur like belief. I walk on ice, it grimaces, then breaks. All my mistakes are frozen in the tight lock of my face. Bare trees hold out their arms, beseech, entreat, cannot forget. The clouds sag with the burden of their weight. The wind screams at the house, bitter, betrayed. The sky is flayed, the moon a fingernail, bitten and frayed." '

Themes

The main themes of ''Rapture'' are love, loss, loneliness, gender issues, and death.

Reception

Critical reception for ''Rapture'' has been positive. In a review for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' Margaret Reynolds praised Duffy's lyrical voice and her attention to repetition and wordplay, stating "Reading about an affair is not supposed to have the same effect. But it does in the case of Carol Ann Duffy's ''Rapture''." In his review for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' William Logan focused on Duffy's language, comparing her work to Auden and

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabet ...

. The Rumpus also praised Duffy's writing and wrote that "In ''Rapture'', surprises land like a lover’s touch and scribble on your skin, right off the page". Rapture is studied as part of the OCR (EMC) A-Level qualification in English Language and Literature, across schools and colleges in England.

Awards

for poetry (2005, won)

References

{{Reflist 2005 poetry books British poetry collections T. S. Eliot Prize-winning works