Selling Manhattan

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

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Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

“Don’t Bother the Earth Spirit” by Joy Harjo (1989)

An eloquent elegiac prose poem, written by America’s first Indigenous American Poet Laureate, it expresses its Indigenous speaker’s sense of the power of nature to create and sustain life despite humanity’s greed and disregard for the reverence such power should command. Unlike Duffy’s poem, Harjo’s poem draws on the idea that nature is simply too wide, too powerful, and too animated to fear the puny efforts of humanity to destroy it.

“Gentle Now, Don’t Add to the Heartache” by Juliana Spahr (2005)

This longer poem, published some 20 years after Duffy’s, expounds on the elegiac sense of loss that pervades Duffy’s closing stanza. The poem regards the relationship between Western civilization and nature and how lyrical and eloquent its artists are about nature, but how destructive and unrepentant its industrialists, developers, and politicians. It is a supreme expression of the despair at the heart of eco-literature.

“The Natives of America” by Ann Plato (1841)

An examination of the multiracial identity of the American experiment, the poem was written by a pioneering figure in American poetry. Plato was part Black and part Indigenous; she brings that complex perspective into her analysis here of how the North American continent positioned America to be a distinctly-unique society, a culture of cooperation, harmony, and respect. Written more than a century before Duffy’s poem, we know what Plato did not: that ideal never happened.

Further Literary Resources

Carol Ann Duffy by Deryn Reese-Jones (2010)

A book-length study of Duffy, the chapter (2) that includes “Selling Manhattan” traces Duffy’s use of dramatic irony, allowing a character to create itself through language, to her interest both in Shakespeare and Robert Browning, and to her interest in writing for the stage, particularly opera.

“Carol Ann Duffy’s Poetry: Reframing the World” by Alaa Abdulhussin (2017)

Among the many articles written on Duffy, this approach is unique in that it begins with the premise that Duffy perceives the function of a poet as grappling with and reframing their socio-economic culture. Most approaches to Duffy’s poetry focus on her love poetry and, given her bisexuality, her keen explorations into the dynamic of sex and the nature of love itself. This essay, although “Selling Manhattan” is not specifically treated, argues that Duffy was committed to a wide array of socio-political outrages, among them environmental concerns.

“‘I Wonder if the Spirit of the Water Has Anything to Say’: Water Imagery in Carol Ann Duffy’s Poetry” by Elena De Wachter (2019)

A thorough analysis of “Selling Manhattan” as an example of eco-literature, the study explores Duffy’s use of the conception of Earth as a living organism. The essay explores the dim future Duffy projects given the real-time issues of global warming and climate change.

Listen to Poem

There are only instructional, classroom-geared videos that both read and analyze “Selling Manhattan.” The most helpful and in-depth of these was posted in 2015 by Emily Sabas, although she intermittently interrupts the poem with analysis. Another helpful recording is a public reading and interview that Duffy gave in 2020 as part of the University of Lincoln (England) Poetry Series. She does not read “Selling Manhattan,” but the video, almost 50 minutes long, gives a sense of Duffy’s Scottish brogue and can help show how carefully “Selling Manhattan” creates voices radically different from the poet’s own.