Carol Ann Duffy's Mrs. Sisyphus
During my first read through, I needed a little background information on who and what Sisyphus was. I found out that Mrs. Sisyphus is based off of a greek myth where a man was punished for chronic deceitfulness to the Gods. The Gods punished him by making him push a tremendous boulder up the slope of a mountain, watch it roll down, and repeat the cycle for the rest of his life. The poetic voice of this is that of the wife of Mr. Sisyphus. I think the different perspective of this poem was fascinating because in such a poem, it is usually Sisyphus who's emotions and feelings are portrayed, yet it is through his wife. The fact that she uses this unique perspective caught my eye. I found this read to be quite an interesting one because Carol Ann Duffy uses the reference to Sisyphus to create a new persona. She wrote this in the perspective of the wife of a non-stop working man, which I found to be very clever. Throughout the read, I came to a realization that the poetic voice is agitated with her husband and that he never stops to rest through the use of "when you haven't the time to pop open a cork or go for so much as a walk in the park?". I found the formatting of the structure intriguing because the poem has longer lines towards the beginning, then get shorter towards the middle, and longer at the end again. If you think about this, it could be juxtaposed to the fact that Sisyphus was repeating everything he did so she could've done this on purpose. I noticed that she also makes use of colloquial language so it makes the audience feel more comfortable. She uses words like "jerk" and "dork". Since Carol Ann Duffy used end-rhyming, I found it an enjoyable and easy read. With the ease she puts into her rhyme scheme, it makes the entire poem flow as if it were covered in butter. The entire poem had a kind of "serious" mood even though there were humorous aspects to it. I feel like Duffy used this poem to show the way the world worked, as the men always work and never have time for their wives, so they have nothing to do but wait (but in Sisyphus' case, he never ends as the boulder always rolls back down).