Stafford Afternoons Flashcards
Context and about
-Duffy moved from Glasgow to Stafford when she was six
- poem suggests she enjoys the freedom to Rome around the highway of her small town as many children did in the early 60s
- poems tone suggests her life was generally uneventful lonely even
- images of loneliness’s and isolation
- like in all fairy stories f you stray from the path the woods are full of hidden dangers for young girls and this wood is no exception
-the incident recalled is a startling intrusion into the innocence of childhood a warning of life’s dangers and premonition of adulthood
“Only there the afternoons could truly pause”
-opens in media res as if having a convo woth the reader
- its ambiguous
-not clear whether the pause is positive of negative
-one suggests a pause in an otherwise busy life; the other suggesting a long boredom
“Long road, empty, dwindled”
-isolation of the child is evident from this Lexis
- everything familiar is removes
-the long road could be a metaphor for the emotional journey from childhood to adulthood
“ waved at windscreens/blured waves back, the speed”
- shows her desire too to travel with the cars, to escape
-she does not see the people as they are blurred and behind windscreens, unseen, faceless, lacking identity -further emphasising the child isolation - the wave back is blurry going at a speed, they are going places unlike her
“Cul-de-sac a strange boy threw a stone “ “i crawled”
- a cul de sac is a street that leads no where like her life
- the boy throwing the stone is a diversion , a pecice of excitement, even so she does not know him and therefore does not trust him so finds an escape to safety, so she thinks
“Thrilled” “ green silence gulped and once swallowed me whole”
She is thrilled by the potential for excitemt to be found
- the hard g is not gentle but harsh giving the sense of danger
- the personification of the woods Also presents rage danger lurking there, its given a predatory quality, the personification heightens the sens of total immersion and suggests that nature while beautiful van also be overwhelming to consuming
“Sly faces” “spit” “ sticky breath on the back of her neck”
Personification continues, the sense to of berating on the back of her neck shows her vunrability
- even the nettles a sitnging plant threaten to spit at her
- she here is referring to cuckoo spit a white foamy ball of sticky fluid secreted from the leafhopper beetle that feeds of nettles
-children in the 60s would recognise this as they knew much more about nature as they were much closer to i t
“Silver birch” ‘purple living root”
-the threatening imagery of the woods manifest into the flasher
- he’s described in similarly naturalistic terms as if he’s grown out the wood himself standing by the silver birch as if he is the tree himself
-she is startled back to reality the world outside intruding summmoning her back
-
-
“Frightful endearments”
The man urges her to stay in words that are oxymoron
- what he says is frightful to her but are endearing words of affection to him showing the distoration of this strange world she has stumbled into
“Scattered and shrieked” “ time fell from the sky like a little red ball”
- her perception of the world has changed the children … in a game but she ha felt real fear and gamer and run from it
-the simile of Duffy imagines this time as a red ball, a child’s toy but also as as the sun setting on a childhood which has been lost
“Too late”
-turning point heightening the tension suggesting she has passses the point of safety
-sense of fatalism as if Time and circumstance have conspired against any hope of retreat
