Prayer (Carol Ann Duffy poem) Literary Elements

The speaker is unnamed and has an omniscient perspective, conveyed in the first-person plural voice

Shakespearian sonnet with somewhat inconsistent iambic pentameter

In the phrase "a woman will lift / her head from the sieve of her hands," Duffy metaphorically compares the shape and function of a woman's cupped hands to that of a sieve.

The phrase "someone calls / a child's name as though they named their loss" uses simile in a nontraditional and somewhat ambiguous way. The phrase implies that the person calling for the child is reminded of past losses, or perhaps that they are afraid of losing the child.

The phrase "stand stock-still" uses alliteration, repeating the sound "S," while "lodger looking" uses alliteration to repeat the sound "L."

Here, objects associated with modernity and the secular world, such as a train, are unexpectedly and ironically sources of transcendence and even holiness.

Shakespearean sonnet

The United Kingdom in the twentieth century

Contemplative, devotional

In the context of the poem, humanity, or perhaps more specifically those people who do not participate in conventional religion, constitutes the protagonist.

The poem dwells on the conflict between individuals' desire for spirituality and the outside world's hostility to it, ultimately suggesting that everyday life may not actually be as hostile to spirituality as it may appear to be.

The poem's climax comes in its final line, when Duffy actually induces a moment of meditative prayerfulness in the reader through the repetition of the words "Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre."

The poem's opening lines argue that prayer can emerge at unexpected moments, foreshadowing the many experiences of prayer that will be detailed throughout the poem.

The words "Pray for us now" allude to the Hail Mary, a Catholic prayer.

The poem's final line quotes the U.K.'s routine radio shipping broadcast.

The phrase "the minims sung by a tree" may be a metonymic way of describing birdsong emanating from a tree.
The phrase "hearing his youth" uses synecdoche, the word "youth" serving as a representation of the man's childhood experiences and memories.

Both "the minims sung by a tree" and "the distant Latin chanting of a train" personify inanimate objects, describing them as singing or chanting.

The phrase "although we are faithless" is somewhat hyperbolic, implying that people in the secular world are entirely faithless as a way to describe a general tendency.

The poem's final line both describes the experience of listening to the radio and transcribes the radio's words directly, creating a highly literal onomatopoetic moment in which the sounds being conveyed match those being described within the poem.