How does Duffy present childhood in The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team
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Both of these poems come from her collection "Mean Time" which contains a great deal of time related poems, looking back at a period of your life, and contemplating the change. The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team is looking back on the best time of his life, a whole section of his existence, and compares it to his life to date. Litany however, is quite different, based on a single moment in the young girl's life, and whilst she is again looking back on a moment in time in a nostalgic fashion, she does not compare it to her current situation.
The opening line of this poem suggests two things: popularity and useless memory. To start with the latter, it is common knowledge that we all have insignificant bits of information stored in our brains, though to us some is selectively more important that to others. It is possible that to our narrator, these songs have huge meaning, but a private one none the less. The second aspect that it suggests is popularity, a theme that is explored during this poem. The three mentioned songs were "top ten that month" and in his mind, that is where he stood during his adolescence, as one of the "top ten" the best, "dominus"- master.
He lived in a "fizzing hope", knowing that he was the "dominus" and well above the others around him. "The clever smell of [his] satchel" apparently proving his superiority and causing an egotistical view of him having the world's praise...