The Unusualness of Carol Anne Duffy’s Poetry Carol Anne Duffy’s poetry like quite a lot of modern poetry is not traditionally written. It does not rhyme and punctuation differs from how it would have been traditionally written. Also sentences do not start and end in orthodox places for example; in ‘Valentine’ sentences cross lines :- I give you an onion. Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful as we …showed first 75 words of 630 total…

…showed last 75 words of 630 total…saying, do you?” This line is directed at two places at once. The reader is asked, as a joke, because of the abnormality of the poem, and the psychiatrist is asked because he probably really does not understand what the patient is on about. None of Carol Anne Duffy’s poems are difficult to understand but it is just that little hint of uncertainty which makes the reader slightly uneasy about what is actually happening.