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New York Times

By SARAH LYALL
Published: May 1, 2009

LONDON — Carol Ann Duffy was named poet laureate of Britain on Friday, the first time in its 341-year history that the post — held by such poets as Dryden, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Ted Hughes — has gone to a woman.

A little taste of Carol Ann Duffy's poetry --

Words, Wide Night

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you



Talent

This is the word tightrope. Now imagine
a man, inching across it in the space
between our thoughts. He holds our breath.

There is no word net.

You want him to fall, don't you?
I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds.
The word applause is written all over him.


and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

Wow! Will have to buy a book of hers now. Glad I just got paid.

So I went to my local independent book store and they had a copy of her "Rapture." Here is the title poem.

Rapture

Thought of by you all day, I think of you.
The birds sing in the shelter of a tree.
Above the prayer of rain, unacred blue,
not paradise, goes nowhere endlessly.
How does it happen that our lives can drift
far from our selves, while we stay trapped in time,
queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift
the pattern of our days, alter the rhyme
we make with loss to assonance with bliss.
Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds
from earth to heaven after rain. Your kiss,
recalled, unstrings, like pearls, this chain of words.
Huge skies connect us, joining here to there.
Desire and passion on the thinking air.