Notes

"The bees is Carol Ann Duffy's first collection of new poems as Poet Laureate..."--Dust jacket Includes Duffy's full poetic range: there are drinking songs, love poems, poems of political anger; there are elegies, too, for beloved friends, and - most movingly - the poet's own mother. Woven and weaving through the book is its presiding spirit: the bee. Sometimes the bee is Duffy's subject, sometimes it strays into the peom, or hovers at its edge. In the end, Duffy's point is clear: the bee symbolizes what we have left of grace in the world, and what is most precious and necessary for us to protect.