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The Bees

2011Carol Ann Duffy

4.6/5

Emily Dickinson understood the importance of bees. She begins a poem "To make a prairie it takes a clover, and one bee--" Another poem venerates the bee as part of a numinous trinity:In the name of the Bee--And of the the Butterfly--And of the Breeze--Amen!Dickinson thought bees lived irresponsible and adventurous lives.Carol Ann Duffy also understands the importance of bees, but the cover notes of this emotion-laden volume tells us that for her they carry all the grace of the world. Bees do have roles in the poems here: sometimes they dart through a poem like a thought and sometimes, as in poems specifically about bees, they have a heavy, lumbering presence. However, most of the poems are not about bees, unless they also have a hand in love and death, Duffy's 2 great subjects. Homage is paid to people lost to the poet, her swollen heart turned over to the reader. In fact, my favorite of the collection is called "The Dead." The love poems also expose her. As always, they voice the hook in one's perception of the world, though she is careful to write, "nothing and no one is wrong."I consider myself fortunate to have come across Carol Ann Duffy a number of years ago and tagged her as someone I want to read. I've learned that to read her poetry is to consistently find intelligence woven with humor, powerful purpose given to us as art. It's no different with this volume. Duffy instructs us, she confesses, and she reminds us the meadow may have some corners untouched by the sun. Then she'll lighten the load by sending in her muse, the bee. She'll get our attention with a line as sharp as a bell--"Out of the silence, I fancied I heard the bronze buzz of a bee...." And so that we remember the grace still abundant in the world she'll delight us with her own bee hymn:Been deep, my poet bees,in the parts of flowers,in daffodil, thistle, rose, eventhe golden lotus; so glidegilded, glad, golden, thus--wise--and know of us:how your scent pervadesmy shadowed, busy heart, and honey is art.

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