'A series of intense moments'

 
“Poetry, above all, is a series of intense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.” –  Carol Ann Duffy

 

Duffy, born in 1955, is one of Britain's best known and most admired poets.   "Duffy . . ." said a critic,  "writes of life in all its sadness - life, as what Eliot calls, that ‘infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.’”

 

Her award-winning collections, which address issues of oppression,gender and violence, include Standing Female Nude, winner of the Scottish Arts Council Award, and Rapture, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize.

 

For Saturday's Poem, here is Duffy's,

 

TALENT

 

  This is the word tightrope.
  Now imagine a man,

inching across it in the space

between our thoughts.

 He holds our breath.

There is no word net.

You want him to fall, don't you?

I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds.

 

 

The word applause is written all over him.