Life & Wisdom Quote by Carol Ann Duffy

Poetry, Carol Ann Duffy suggests, isn’t a decorative art so much as a high-stakes translation job: taking what’s raw, private, and frequently incoherent in us and forcing it into language that can survive contact with other people. The line is quietly corrective. It pushes back against the idea of poets as airy aesthetes or oracular geniuses and reframes them as workers in a particular medium: words under pressure.

The key move is her pairing of “language and images.” Feelings alone don’t make a poem; they’re the volatile material. What makes the poet necessary is the craft of finding the right container. “Trying to find” matters, too. It demystifies inspiration and emphasizes pursuit, revision, and failure. Duffy is defending the poem as process rather than pure confession, a stance that undercuts the popular caricature of poetry as simply “expressing yourself.” Intense feeling is common; the ability to shape it into something legible and surprising is rare.

Context sharpens the intent. As a poet associated with accessible, speaking-voice lyric and public-facing work (including her tenure as Poet Laureate), Duffy has often operated in spaces where poetry is expected to “mean something” to non-specialists. This line reads as both invitation and boundary: poetry begins in emotion, but it earns its authority through precision. The subtext is almost political: if you can name a feeling accurately, you can share it, argue with it, and refuse to be ruled by it. In Duffy’s hands, the poem becomes a civic tool for private weather.