VALENTINE

INTRODUCTION Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow. She grew up in a working class family that believed in social change and the politics of protest One of her schoolteachers encouraged her to write poetry. So she published her first poems at sixteen Duffy attended university in Liverpool Then she lived in London for 15 years and now lives near Manchester Carol Ann Duffy works as a lecturer in poetry

POEM
Carol Ann Duffy wrote this poem in seven stanzas. Three of the stanzas consist of a single line.
In this poem, Carol Ann Duffy states her dislike for the normal stuff you get on Saint Valentine’s Day. On one level, Duffy finds fault with Valentine's Day. On a deeper level, she wants to modernize the symbols we use for love. She also wants us to speak more honestly about love in relationships.
Duffy looks at the ways an onion is suitable for showing love. She tells her lover what an onion will do for him. Duffy uses the onion as symbol. The onion represents light, discovery and tears. The onion represents the tough side of love. Duffy thinks an onion stands for the truth about love.
The first stanza contains a dramatic statement in one line. In this opening line, the word ‘not’ shows that Duffy rejects normal romantic stuff:‘Not a red rose or a satin heart’.
In the second stanza, Duffy explains how an onion works as a love gift. The brown skin of the onion hides the white vegetable that’s inside. This brown skin is the wrapping paper of the gift, the onion. Duffy compares her gift, the onion, to the moon wrapped in brown paper. This picture of the moon represents the whole onion, just after it has been peeled. The brown wrapping paper around the moon is the brown skin of the onion. The round, white moon is there under the brown paper, and we know that when the paper is removed we will see the moon's light:‘It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.It promises light’.The moon’s ‘light’ represents love. Moonlight often provides a