Prayer Summary & Analysis
by Carol Ann Duffy

Prayer Summary & Analysis
by Carol Ann Duffy

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“Prayer” was written by the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate of the UK from 2009 to 2019. The poem explores what traditional religious faith can mean in modern society, suggesting that conventional spirituality can be hard to come by while also implying that some forms of faith can be found in the most mundane aspects of daily life. The poem's form mirrors its thematic ideas, as “Prayer” is a contemporary sonnet; it follows some traditional rules of the form while also making the form (like its conception of religious faith) fresh and new. “Prayer” was included in Duffy’s 1993 collection Mean Time.

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