Medusa

Sixth Stanza

Connection between this poem and the title of this book & the author's style

Third Stanza

I stared in the mirror.

Love gone bad

showed me a Gorgon.

I stared at a dragon

Fire spewed

from the mouth of a mountain

-Medusa and Poseidon were a loving couple, in which Medusa can be referred as a wife

-Carol Ann Duffy's feministic writing style, depicting women who were spiritually or physically "damaged" by their 'husbands'

-Symbolization, metaphor, simile

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

What's different in this poem?

-Poseidon as a husband

-Medusa turned into a monster by herself

-Anxious personality of Medusa in the past

Medusa by Carol Ann Duffy

Second Stanza

Fourth & Fifth Stanzas

My bride's breath soured, stank

in the grey bags of my lungs

I'm foul mouthed now, foul tongued,

yellow fanged.

There are bullet tears in my eyes.

Are you terrified?

Who is Medusa?

I looked at a ginger cat,

a housebrick

shattered a bowl of milk.

I looked at a snuffling pig,

a boulder rolled

in a heap of shit.

First Stanza

I glanced at a buzzing bee,

a dull grey peddle fell

to the ground.

I glanced at a singing bird,

a handful of dusty gravel

spattered down

-Monster in the Greek myth

-The youngest, only beautiful of three sisters before curse

-In love with Poseidon despite Athena's disapproval

-Cursed by Athena

A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy

grew in my mind,

which turned the hairs on my heap to filthy snakes

as though my thoughts

hissed and spat on my scalp

Jason Jin

Who is Medusa in this poem?

Seventh Stanza

And here you come

with a shield for a heart

and a sword for a tongue

and your girls, your girls.

Wasn't I beautiful?

Wasn't I fragrant and young?

Look at me now.

-A woman who lost everything due to

her excessive jealousy and disbelief of her husband and was damaged by her husband's cold-hearted betrayal.