Litany.

The soundtrack then was a litany – candlewick

bedspread three piece suite display cabinet –
and stiff-haired wives balanced their red smiles,
passing the catalogue. Pyrex. A tiny ladder
ran up Mrs Barr’s American Tan leg, sly
like a rumour. Language embarrassed them.

The terrible marriages crackled, cellophane

round polyester shirts, and then The Lounge
would seem to bristle with eyes, hard
as the bright stones in engagement rings,
and sharp hands poised over biscuits as a word
was spelled out. An embarrassing word, broken

to bits, which tensed the air like an accident.

This was the code I learnt at my mother’s knee,
pretending
to read, where no one had cancer, or sex, or debts,
and certainly not leukaemia, which no one could
spell.
The year a mass grave of wasps bobbed in a jam-jar;
a butterfly stammered itself in my curious hands.
A boy in the playground, I said, told me
to fuck off; and a thrilled, malicious pause
salted my tongue like an imminent storm. Then
uproar. I’m sorry, Mrs Barr, Mrs Hunt, Mrs Emery,
sorry, Mrs Raine. Yes, I can summon their names.
My mother’s mute shame. The taste of soap.

The original Blog on Carol Ann Duffy’s

Litany poem.
L.P. Hartley once wrote ‘the past is a
foreign country; they do things
differently there.’ Carol Ann Duffy
explores the relative ‘foreignness’ of
recollection revealing both its
reassuring familiarity and its
unexpected revelation. This conflict
between voluntary and involuntary
memory; between what we think we know
and what we find we didn’t dare to know
or admit, forms the ‘foreign’ land of
much of Carol Ann Duffy’s poetic
landscape. I say landscape deliberately.
Duffy’s evocation of the past conjures
up worlds and words very much concerned
with territory and ‘ownership’ and in
this poem ‘Litany’ we see such how the
resurrection of the past represents who
we are, and what we are and were.
Duffy loves lists. Indeed lists are a
way that Duffy can ironise our relation
to the past. Such lists inspire
collusion and a spirited humorous
collusion at that. Every time I read a
Duffy list I admire the very developed
degree of selectivity and peculiar
attentiveness employed by the poet to
make such a list work; to make it
representative of the message and era
she has elected to represent and re-
animate.
When we read the first stanza of
‘Litany’ those of us who can recall the
1960s smilingly tick off the resonances
and connotatations of Duffy’s
acknowledged world. It feels so right,
so present to us. This ’presence’ is
then used as the basis for the more
‘inside’ revelation. The poet uncovers
the secret tensions behind half-
understood childhoodsthrough the play
between recognition and misrecognition.

Duffy deploys a simile: ‘sly like a

rumour’ to risk a revelation. For
Duffy’s childhood recollection is now
narrated by an adult and adults may
convert half-glimpsed fascination into
definitive knowledge. This tension
between a the writer who is an adult and
the writer who was the child
under renders Duffy’s revisitation of
the past both comical and tragic.
For this territory is a world where
words were infantilised for the sake of
politeness, for the sake of social
sanitisation and stability. Coffee
mornings and ‘get togethers’ skirted
around authenticity and truth.Children
were expected to know nothing. But Duffy
knows how curious children are about the
unsaids, about the secret worlds and
words of the adults; of family friends.
Duffy rediscovers the superficiality of
social connection, and ironises it
heavily. How lonely was such a
childhood we wonder? How lonely indeed
for the adults trying to conform and to
present themselves as relentlessly
normal? Safe,’normal’ words imprisoned
and suffocated relationships. We wonder
of course how far things have actually
changed?
Duffy makes us retouch the signs of the
past. Thinking arrives through sensory
recollection. We experience a past that
we may or may not have directly
experienced through resonant sensory
detail and this makes us involved. We
are seduced by the pride in pyrex and
the grand ‘lounge’ of the past!
We remember cellophane. We hear its name
once again. ‘Polyester’ has become
transmutated into a joke; a failed
symbol of pragmatic enterprise( one does
not have to iron it) with erotic
nullity. ( It produces static and is
distinctly sweatyand erotically
unappetising !) The juxtaposition of the
different senses makes the reader extend
their involvement within this world of
the ‘Lounge’ and the suppressed word;
memory is truly resurrecting..and
uncomfortable!
It is a world of conventional
relationships and behaviours. Anything
that could undermine such a world is
feared and abjected:
‘An embarrassing word, broken to bits..’
Duffy’s astute alignment of biscuit and
unlooked for testimony is throwaway and
yet devastating. Protocol twitches at
the mention of something real, unsightly
and unmentionable.
Sex and death intervene in the memory of
the child and destabilise the rigid
boundedness of such a ‘reality’ so that
the transgression instigated by the
looming knowledge of sex, reedits the
past. The litany of names in the final
stanza operates as much as an ironic
obituary now for Duffy’s narrator as for
background detail and verfication. These
names are now most like absences, they
are ‘hauntings’ and only survive
through the humanity and humour of
Duffy’s excavation into the words upon
which we rest (somewhat anxiously
perhaps) the past.
I can still hear the coffee cups!

Overview of the meaning: A litany is a prayer/recital

by a clergy and repeated by the people. The poem is
about a child pretending to read whilst listening in to
her mother and her married friends gossiping about
middle-class suburban life in the 1960’s in code, to
protect the young child. However, the young child is
smarter than these ladies realise and decodes their
speech. Finally, the poem concludes with the child
repeating a statement from a fellow classmate,
causing distress and shame to rise between her
mother and the other present ladies. The poem
could be autobiographical.

Quote 1: “certainly not leukemia, which no one

could spell”
This could be referencing how the young child has
worked out about the “code” which these women
speak in. as well as this highlighting how children are
treated as oblivious despite this child knowing
exactly what’s happening. Has a slightly sarcastic
tone with a sense that this child is possibly smarter
than the ladies through her ability to work out the
code and what they are spelling.

Context = children are excluded from conversations

through adults spelling out words which are not
appropriate.

Critic = British council “she writes in everyday,

conversational language” links to the normality of
the situation – many women are known for gossiping
about lives and excluding their children by spelling
out the words to avoid questions.

Quote 2: “the terrible marriages crackled,

cellophane/ round polyester shirts”

This quote provides sharp images of discomfort and

unhappiness. “crackled” could be showing how
through persistent unhappiness these marriages are
not as perfect as these middle-class women make
out to be. Also the “cellophane” is a metaphor for
protecting the marriage but the problems are still
obvious to everyone else as this material is not
substantial enough to hide them.

Context = The middle class women in the poem

might have contrasted Duffy’s left wing views.

Critic = Elizabeth O’Reilly “incorporates humour with

serious insights and social commentary” links to
Duffy bringing awareness to the hidden and not so
perfect lives of middle class women.

Quote 3: “told me to fuck off” “thrilled, malicious

pause”

The “pause” after the exclamation “fuck off”

highlights the horrified silence from the middle class
ladies sat around this child. Also the use of the verb
“thrilled” and adjective “malicious” adds effect by
increasing the tension and drama in the last stanza
as well as possibly showing that the child knows the
mistake but is “thrilled” with themselves. The
women are incredibly fake and this is made clear to
the child, therefore it could be that the use of
powerful and explicit language is the personas way
of rebelling from their fake monotonous lives.
Context= this poem could be autobiographical,
therefore Duffy is reminiscing on a time where she
swore in front of her mother’s friends.

Quote 4: “My mother’s mute shame. The taste of

soap.”

This quote suggests the embarrassment her mother

must be feeling after her child’s outburst of explicit
language. Also the “soap” refers to the punishment
which would’ve been a common punishment for
Duffy’s time.

Context= Washing a child’s mouth out with soap

would’ve been a typical punishment when Duffy was
growing up

Quote 5: “The year a mass grave of wasps bobbed in

a jam-jar; a butterfly stammered itself in my curious
hands.”

This quote has a sense of awe for nature but could

also be juxtaposing the two species of wasps and
butterflies. Also these two creatures are metaphors
for adults, “wasps” and children, “butterfly”. The
contrast of these creatures could be referring to the
opposing feelings of sweet but deathly which links to
the “jam-jar”

Explain the structure of the poem: The 6 lined

stanzas could represent the monotone and boring
lives of the women in the poem. The poem begins
with a materialistic aspect then progresses into
deeper subjects such as marriages then sex. Finally,
the child increases the tension by repeating a rude
remark from a classmate which ends the poem on a
dramatic note.

Writers’ intentions: Duffy may have been trying to

highlight how materialistic and fake women can be
and how hypocritical they are despite being
‘religious’. As well as this, the poet could be
suggesting that their lives are not perfect, including
their marriages.