The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

Be terrified.
It's you I love,
perfect man,
Greek God, my own;
but I know you'll go,
betray me, stray
from home.
So better by far for
me if you were stone.
--from Medusa

Stunningly original and haunting, the voices of Mrs. Midas, Queen Kong, and Frau Freud, to say nothing of the Devil's Wife herself, startle us with their wit, imagination, and incisiveness in this collection of poems written from the perspectives of the wives, sisters, or girlfris of famous -- and infamous -- male personages. Carol Ann Duffy is a master at drawing on myth and history, then subverting them in a vivid and surprising way to create poems that have the pull of the past and the crack of the contemporary.

Carol Ann Duffy is the author of various poetry collections, including The World's Wife and Rapture, as well as edited poetry anthologies and children's books. She has won the Forward Prize, the Whitbread Poetry Award, the Lannan Award, and the E.M. Forster Award, among others.