Before You Were Mine

• “your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.”

  • Glorified image of the mother. Sense of freedom and liberty. The past appears to possess a sense of glamour and untarnished beauty → time takes this away.
  • Verb ‘blows’ certainly connotes a sense of beauty and freedom.
  • Caesura in “.Marilyn.” pays particular attention to the proper noun.
  • Metaphor to compare her mother to the iconic starlet of the 1950s, known for her beauty and talent.
  • Description of the ‘polka-dot’, a free-spirited dance craze in the 1920s.
• “…my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics”

  • Metaphor - accentuates the beauty and magic of mothers past, longing to connect/recover the past.
  • Symbolism - 'high-heeled red shoes' emblem of past, connotes beauty & glamour.
  • Tactile imagery - 'hands' emphasise the poets longing to connect with the past she desires to physically touch it. Intangible and tangible ideas.
  • Caesura -  functions as a literal pause perhaps represents the stopping of time.
  • Cyclical nature - stages of development, time to be treasured
• AO5 - Eavan Boland – “Duffy’s poetry is actively concerned with recovery”

  • Certainly carries weight as she is almost actively trying to reclaim and ‘recover’ past memories of her mother. She wants to take hold of the beauty of the past and recover the person her mother used to be.
• "I see you, clear as scent”

  • Synaesthesia - the all-encompassing nature of memories and the past, a direct transportation back in time.
  • Simile - ‘clear as scent’ = seemingly nonsensical, the intoxicating nature of the past / overwhelming sensory language, idea that the scene is so real yet there is a dream-like quality, ethereal and magical.
  • Monosyllabic sounds - simplification of words to the bare minimum.
  • ‘I see you’ Present tense participle - underlines the clarity of her memories, she juxtaposes the past, this is happening now.