Carol Ann Duffy War Photographer

Improved Essays
Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1955. She graduated from Liverpool University in 1977 with a degree in Philosophy. She began writing poetry in primary school (elementary school), and continued to throughout the rest of her life. She worked for The Guardian’s poetry critic in the late 1980s, and also for a poetry magazine in the mid 1990s. Queen Elizabeth II appointed Duffy as the British Poet Laureate in 2009 on a ten-year term. In 1985, she published a poetry collection title “Standing Female Nude,” with one of the poems in the collection titled “War Photographer.” In this poem, Carol Ann Duffy uses imagery to illustrate how people ignore things that do not affect them.
There are clearly problems with the war described in
…show more content…
The war photographer send all of his photos to the newspaper editor, in which “his editor will pick out five or six” (Duffy 19-20). The “100 agonies in black and white” invoke imagery of different photos all of the war (Duffy 19-20). The newspaper editor, as depicted, glosses over them and chooses his five or six quickly. The editor is also a representative for the people. There are so many photos of undesirable situations that the editor has no time or energy to study each one carefully. Instead he simply chooses a few that look good and the rest of them are tossed into the archives where they will be studied deeply once or twice every decade or two. The few selected photos will be used “for Sunday’s supplement,” which is for a newspaper article (Duffy 21). It implements imagery of a black and white document. A supplement, by definition, is not a main idea, but something minor that adds to something else. No imagery of a front page article with a big headline is initiated Instead, it creates imagery of a side story or a small thing shrouded by something larger, perhaps a big scandal on the front page. This represents people pushing aside pressing problems in order to see more of things that they

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The speaker mentions that he half expects to find his own name “in letters like smoke” (16) among the list of dead men. The speaker runs his fingers along the names and as he stops at a particular one powerful images, almost premonitions of the past, come to his mind. He sees “a woman’s blouse” (19) within the black granite, “a booby trap’s white flash” (18), “a red bird’s wings” (22-23), and “the sky” (24). Through the speaker’s use of this wonderful imagery the colors and images penetrate our minds as they do his. These images are snap shots of the bloody war and of the man’s life.…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the many different types of literature, poetry offers us the most compelling insights into personal and public issues. Instead of all the typical topics that poets have used, Australian poet Bruce Dawe uses aspects of his varied and interesting past to express to us the public and private issues of his life. Since he had lived a life full of different occupations, lifestyles and situations, he uses poetic techniques and language to encompass us into his life, two examples being the poems “Home coming” and “Drifters” In the poem “Homecoming”, Bruce Dawe uses a variety of language techniques and imagery to portray his personal point of view towards the war in Vietnam. Its journey depicts the futility of war and the devastations upon human individuals and or the society as a whole.…

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Protest Dbq

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Different people use different forms of protest, especially when it comes to major events, for an instance, war. Some may use pictures while others may use memes and/or quotes to protest. Writers often use writings and the usage of imagery, irony, and/or structure in their documents serve as the strongest elements in their way to protest. Writers use imagery such as the soldiers’ fighting condition and the aftermath of the war to describe how rough war is to protest.…

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The war culture depicted in The Things They Carried greatly incorporates a value of the past. From the start of the story, the soldier’s reliance on the past is made apparent through their nearly unanimous collection of photographs. These photographs serve as a coping mechanism for the soldiers, reminding them of simpler times; however, the way the soldiers react to these photographs reveals a core component of their cultural values while at war. Specifically, Jimmy Cross carried a photo of Martha, and “Whenever he looked at [it], he thought of new things he should’ve done” (O’Brien 5). When looking at this photo, Jimmy Cross could have been struck with any number of hypotheticals.…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Much Ado About Blackberries One of the most influential female poets of all time, especially during the twentieth century, is Sylvia Plath. Her poetry is most well known for depicting her emotions and life story in a creative way. Plath is also widely known for committing suicide, and how her depressive feelings that led to her suicide impacted her writing. “Blackberrying,” a poem she wrote close to her death, displays these feelings well, as well as Plath’s desire to return to her childhood years when she was happier. In “Blackberrying” by Sylvia Plath, the overall theme of longing to return to childhood communicates itself through imagery, sound devices, and figurative language.…

    • 1355 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Stenographers Poem

    • 1634 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Lost and Found: Identification and Community in “The Stenographers” and “This is a Photograph of Me” P.K. Page’s “The Stenographers” and Margaret Atwood’s “This is a Photograph of Me” navigate the state of being ostracized from the larger community. The poetic devices utilised within the poems create a sense of community and belonging for the lost or unnoticed. In Page’s poem it illustrates the mental condition of the stenographers, a profession women took up during the Second World War, in an effort to engage the audience with an often overlooked group. Atwood’s poem illuminates the status of the speaker as it describes a photograph and their difficult to pinpoint location with its landscape that has remained unnoticed.…

    • 1634 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Memories and moments can be remembered deep within our mind and shared by word, but these days people choose to remember these things by taking pictures and viewing photos with others. Technology these days makes that so simple. Take out a phone, snap a picture, and post it on a social media website or share it with all your friends via text. Travel back roughly 155 years ago and taking snapshots weren’t even close to that easy. From 1860-1865 American was fighting a Civil War that broke out between the Northern and Southern States because of several slavery disputes.…

    • 1346 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Technology In Civil War

    • 1671 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Death, destruction, and mayhem are just a few of the vestiges of modern war present throughout the United State Civil War. This conflict was based on industrialization moving to the boundaries of total war. The American Civil War is the first modern war due to innovation in technology. This is because of advances in weaponry, logistic, and communications. The industrial Revolution allowed for the greatest level of production in human history, which in turn led to the greatest level of destruction known during that time.…

    • 1671 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Many young children dream of being princesses or superheroes when they grow up and the rest of the world permits them to live in this fantasy world while they can. Inevitably, though, one day, the children will realize that the world is not the fairytale they once imagined it to be. A piece of their innocence and bliss slips away. The idea of loss of innocence has been popular in literature for ages. One of the best known novels in the world, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, follows the story of a young girl as she discovers that her town is not the picturesque place she once thought it was, but is instead filled with people quick to judge, especially when it comes to race.…

    • 894 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Tim O'Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, eloquently (NR) demonstrates the theme of ‘beauty in horror’. The novel emphasizes this theme through the underlying foil between beauty and atrocities that are not uncommon in war stories. O'Brien focuses on the imagery of these events as well as the tone to illustrate the difficulties that soldiers are exposed to and how they have been conditioned to their situation to no longer see the horror in these horrific events rather start seeing them as beautiful events. The relevance of this theme is most prevalent in the short story, “How to Tell a True War Story.” This short story illustrates many different barbaric events that have been very beautifully illustrated.…

    • 1359 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen shows the effects that eh war has on people and protests it when the text states that the soldiers, “ limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;”( 6). This document demonstrates the brutality of war and the things that the soldiers have to go through. Imagery is used to display these things. However, imagery is not the only way that writers protest…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Anne Sexton gives us a glimpse into the most intimate parts of her life through her confessional poem, “The Double Image.” Since Sexton is confessing about her life after post-traumatic stress disorder, we would assume that she is always being completely honest; however, we see that some events of the poem are merely figments of her imagination. Just when we think we understand, she hits us with the brutal reality that is her life. Sexton uses rhymes and writes in child-like phrases to explain that her truth cannot be looked at outright; the reality of her life is too harsh to be written in plain words. By relaying these somber issues in a playful and sometimes humorous way, we get closer to the truth.…

    • 1741 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While upon first glance her corpus seems to be filled with elementary age written material- one word titles such as “Poppies”, “Ponds”, and “Daisies”, and seemingly undersized poems- Mary Oliver’s sharp observation of the natural world and all it’s inhabitants allows her to transcend and creatively tackle some of the toughest topics to pen, such as death and the meaning of life, in a way that allows readers of every age to grapple with and discern her conclusions. Many of her poems captured in her Pulitzer Prize winning collection “New and Selected Poetry” feature her rapturous lyricism covering her absent apprehension about what will happen after she takes her last earthly breath. Through her use of symbolism, light and dark imagery, and allusion in her poem “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field” (page 99), Oliver argues that death is not something that should preoccupy human fears but should rather be accepted by all.…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In poems, “Stealing” and “Education for leisure”, Duffy uses a range of literary devices like colloquial language and short sentences. Duffy clearly portrays a sinister and lonely persona in both poems. In “Stealing” the persona is presented as lonely and isolated from society so they resort to stealing just for the pleasure of doing it. Similarly, in “Education for leisure”, an egotistical young adult is portrayed who is killing living things to undo his intense isolation. These poems were written by Duffy to show the terrible situation the UK faced in the 1980s.…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Poet for our time's commentary The headlines of Newspapers are those that catch our eye, and “grab attention”. The poem Poet for our Times by Carol Ann Duffy is one that explores, from the perspective of a newspaper headline writer, scandals and the normal aspects discussed in poetry. Referencing News headlines, the speaker, who is in a bar, provides the audience with social critics as well as the state of what art has become in 1980’s Britain.…

    • 1381 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays