A Dreaming Week

• Summary of A Dreaming Week

  • Focuses on the contrast of escapism through poetry alongside the breakdown of a relationship
• Key Themes of A Dreaming Week

  • Imagination
  • Falling apart
  • Slow
• “Not tonight…”

  “Not tomorrow…” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Always starts on a negative tone
  • = a rejection to a date or time spent together
  • the “,” or caesura prolongues the negative tone and slow end to the relationship
• Structure of A Dreaming Week

  • 7 stanzas reflect the 7 days of the week as the relationship comes to an end
• “I’m dreaming in the heart of the honeyed dark..” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Texture and sweetness of the dark creates excitement in escapism
• “a bird that’s never flown…” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Metaphor for feeling trapped in a relationship
• “monocle of the moon,” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Reverting to a childhood escapism and fantasy, leaving her current adult life
• “the tome of a dim room,” (A Dreaming Week)

  • The heaviness of reality
• ”I’m dreaming till the stars are blue in the face“ (A Dreaming Week)

  • Existence is tiresome in this relationship
• “printing the news of their old light with the ink of space,” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Duffy creates her own stars through poetry as a means of finding fulfilment
• “yards and yards of black silk night to cover my sleeping face.” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Funereal connotations aspires to the death of the relationship
• “in the crook of midnight’s arm like a lover held by another safe from hard, like a child stilled by a mother,” (A Dreaming Week)

  The pertinence / repitition of “like”, this only being a simile shows that escapism through poetry isn’t the same feeling as a physical touch / love
• “I’m dreaming till the tides have come and gone sighing over the frowning sand,” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Water has traditional literary connotations of depression
• “the whale‘s lonely song” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Loneliness and solitude comes with the escapism of a relationship
• “I’m dreaming under the stuttering clock,” (A Dreaming Week)

  • Trapped, time isn’t moving on
• ”the last of daylight hurrying for a date with the glamorous dark.“ (A Dreaming Week)

  Uncertainty of the future, although the beauty creates an enticement
• How does A Dreaming Week link to The Colour Purple?

  • Celie is similarly trapped in a relationship with Mr. _ that she dreams of escaping