litany commentary

litany	A litany is a set form of prayer in church, in which the congregation responds with pre-set phrases. The religious connotations are obviously ironic here: the words emphasized in the first verse -candlewick bedspread, three piece suite..etc - are all naming the materialistic products introduced and desired in the 50s: the latest in furnishings, the newly available consumer durables are the 'religion' of these 'stiff-haired wives'. These are the words which echo and repeat through their conversations; the catalogue is their 'hymn book'. The irony here seems bitter and derogatory - as will the poem as a whole in relation to these 50s 'housewives'' view of the world.
soundtrack	Compare this beginning with the beginning of The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team. Both begin with a kind of surrounding music - the soundtrack by which the speakers of the two poems lived their lives. But 'The Captain..' clearly uses a persona; this seems more directly autobiographical. In 'The Captain..' , his soundtrack is at least his own - of his own time and generation; here, the soundtrack of the speaker is imposed - it represents the concerns of the mothers. (But having his own soundtrack does not save 'the captain'; his future life does not deliver on the promises he thought were made in his adolescence. In Litany - the speaker, although more obviously repressed, rebels - refuses to accept the surrounding terms.)
stiff-haired...red smiles	Stiff-haired because they've got 'permed' hair; 'red smiles' because of their lipstick - and notice how they are defined by their married status - wives ( suggesting an accepted subordinance?) Their appearance - so emphasized - perhaps connects with other words in the poem - Pyrex, cellophane - to suggest a kind of artificiality. The eye which this poem casts on these women, their way of life, is quite cold.
Pyrex	What's the effect of isolating this word in its own sentence? It seems to claim for itself an (absurd) importance - as though it is the height of these 'wives'' desires: something to be said in hushed tones. Perhaps it's an over-reading, but, picking up from 'litany', it perhaps refers to, and ironically replaces, the pyx - the box in which the consecrated host is carried. (Maybe there's a broader question here: what is Duffy's attitude to organised religion? It's as though religion here is being used as a stick to beat these 'wives' with - their replacement of religion is a kind of debasement - but elsewhere in the poems, Duffy herself can be critical of real religious practices (see 'Confession', for example.). However, there are also poems which seek to make religious terms their own - which take the unformalised feelings behind religion seriously (see 'Prayer' and 'Moments of Grace' , for example)
Mrs Barr's American Tan leg	Opposing the smiles and perfections of the consumer 'lifestyle', this slight hint that all is not well - a ladder in Mrs Barr's stockings. But it comes into the poem associated with 'rumour' - gossip. And stockings are already 'sexualised' - especially associated with 'American Tan' - suggesting something of the popular gossip of the 40s regarding English girls, nylons and American soldiers. Perhaps there's rumours about Mrs Barr's past; certainly for Mrs Barr, the 'consumerist' dream isn't quite perfect.
language embarrassed them	Looking at the use of language - a way of talking, with its rituals, gaps and difficulties - is the means through which Duffy aims to diagnose the way of life in the 50s. There's two levels of speech in the first verse: the 'litany' of the names of desired products, and the level of 'rumour' - embarrassing, necessarily 'sly' as it will be about those things in life which are not perfect, which should not (for the wives at least) be named directly. This difference between what can be spoken, and what not, becomes the subject of the poem - and also, the means of the speaker's 'rebellion', the defining feature of her difference to the wives.
terrible marriages crackled	If the tiny ladder in the first verse introduced something not quite right, the second verse begins by focusing on the gap between the comfortable appearance of 'public' speech, and the uncomfortable 'reality' underneath. The marriages are simply acknowledged, judged, by the poem as 'terrible'. But not clearly spoken about then - the only sound they produce is 'crackled' - a word suggesting an absence of clear articulation as well as a continuing disturbing energy, like static.
cellophane	The noise of the suppressed conversation about the bad marriages is compared to the crackling of cellophane (a material new to the period, just as 'polyester' is - both materials suggesting something of the artificiality of the time, its false glossiness.)
The Lounge	The words are given capitals as though what is being named is a kind of unique place. 'Lounge' - as opposed to front room/back room or sitting room/living room - becomes fashionable in the 50s as more 'posh'. Duffy is able to suggest some of the pretensions of these wives by a mere word, a capital. Like 'pyrex', it suggests a whole tone of voice, an attitude. The wives in the lounge are described in threatening terms: '..eyes, hard / as the bright stones in engagement rings....sharp hands..'. This atmosphere of threat leads to the poet's punishment in the last verse.
..word broken / to bits	The wives spell out the 'embarrassing' words - that vaguely funny habit of adults when speaking of something difficult with a child present. But Duffy gives the action a suggestion of violence - to language and a proper knowledge of the world - while the wives find what the word signifies also, in their turn, threatening: ...(it) tensed the air like an accident.
the code	This way of (not) dealing with the relation between language and the world is what is taught the poet by her mother and her friends. The world then cannot be understood or read - it's a form of just pretending to read. What's left out is what threatens their world's neatness: cancer, or sex, or debts. (an odd collection of things, if you think about it).
leukaemia	I find something slightly odd about the tone of this line. It refers back to the spelling out in verse 2 perhaps - but it also seems an 'academic' scoring of points against the less well-educated wives: a kind of 'dig' at them. Perhaps it's a pre-emptive dig at them in the poem, as it leads to the final lines, with their defeat of the child.
..a mass grave of wasps..a butterfly stammered	If the main part of this verse has focused on what the wives leave out of their 'world', then the last two lines refer to the poet/child's own curiosity and discovery of the world beyond the lounge. As is conventional in much poetry from Wordsworth onwards (and continued today by someone like Seamus Heaney), this process of discovery is represented by the child's perception of Nature. The butterfly (a figure for Nature) has its own language for the child - though as yet not fully understood (the butterfly stammered..).
a boy in the playground	Although the issue for the wives will be the child's repeating of the boy's words, and not the boy's aggression towards her -and that might seem surprising, the child herself knows that her repetition will indeed shock - and for her, that's the point. She wants to shock; precociously she wants to strike back against the wives' censorship of the world. '...a thrilled malicious pause / salted my tongue like an imminent storm' : note particularly the word 'malicious'; this is a conscious rebellion.
I'm sorry	What the child had to say then, not what the poem expresses now.
summon their names	The satiric energy of the poem has been fuelled by a desire for revenge for the humiliation of the child; all these years later the poet still recalls the names of the women to whom she had to apologise. You 'summon' someone to court; you also summon up ghosts: the poem is, in a way, doing both.
mute shame	Effectively defines the difference between herself and her mother: the poet feels neither 'shame' nor is she, as the writing of the poem shows, mute.
the taste of soap	The 'traditional' punishment for swearing: washing the child's mouth out with soap, after having said something 'dirty'. The poem might be regarded as a recreation of a whole past way of life from that one continuing remembered sensory detail. It also perhaps suggests a kind of motivation for aspects of Duffy's style of expression - to react against that effort to clean up the world and to make language clean and comfortable.

Litany	Do you agree/disagree with this commentary? Anything you want to add? stevebrown@clara.co.uk
	complete text of the poem