A dreaming week

• captures a week of finding comfort in poetry amidst a fading relationship’s melancholy.
• Form: 7 stanzas represents one day of the week. The first line of each stanza begins with a temporal location, ‘tonight’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘night after that’ and on.
• stanza 1: first line enjambement dreamlike flow The carefree flowing from line to line allows for words to blur together, emulating a dreamy state. location of ‘a bed in the attic’ trope of the Mad Woman in the Attic. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and ‘Jane Eyre‘, pushes women into small and unseen places. semantics of methods of transport permeates the poem, ‘boat’, and ‘ark’ escapism, or ‘ark’, biblical story. symbolize the beginning of a new relationship or chapter in Duffy’s life.
• stanza 2/3: association of ‘book’ and ‘a bird’ is metaphorical for the freedom that literature escapism, ‘flown’ stems from the semantics of flying, literature transport you out melancholic tone permeates within images of ‘the moon’ and ’sleeping’. melancholic numbing, end of her relationship feminine ‘moon’ is all-seeing, feminine symbol vision comforting image,drowsy consonance of ‘m’ across ‘monocle’ and ‘moon’ further this idea,  sibilance on the following line, ‘sleeping S’ aural quality.
• 4/5: rhyme across ‘face’ and ‘space’ furthers the dreamlike tone reference to the ‘stars’ that are ‘printing the news of their old light’ again provides comfort. Alike the ‘big old tree’ of the first stanza, nature is presented as a constant force of comfort. ‘midnight’ is personified Duffy, now rejecting her love, turns to the night for support. Duffy personifies night in ‘crook of midnight’s arm’, resting metaphorically within the arms of the night. It is ‘soft and warm’,
• stanza 6/7; anaphoric ‘I’m dreaming’ chimes again rhyme across ‘gone’, ‘song’ and ‘long’ creates an extended /o/ sound elaborates dreamlike melancholy of the tone, Duffy again touching upon ‘water’ and ‘whale’s’ to reference the comfort of nature. ‘whale’ as a homophone, perhaps signalling to wail. ends ‘glamorous dark’. perhaps discussing the romanticization of sadness within the modern-day. Although sad, Duffy finds comfort in this state, being alone with her thoughts for the first time.
• A03: A Dreaming Week can be understood as a breakup poem. Duffy ended a 15-year relationship with Jackie Kay a few years before this poem was written