Anthology - Before You Were Mine

QUOTE: rhetorical question, auditory imagery, colloquialism, superlative, time imagery

“the decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?“

QUOTE: single-word sentence, period

“Marilyn.“

QUOTE: synecdoche, sexual imagery, direct address

“your polka-dot dress blows round your legs“

QUOTE: polysyndeton, repetition, tricolon

“sparkle and waltz and laugh“

QUOTE: direct address, personal pronouns, time imagery, distance imagery

“I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on“

QUOTE: rhetorical question, colloquialism, sexual imagery, direct address

“whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?“

QUOTE: ‘r’ alliteration, colour imagery, synecdoche, caesura

“red shoes, relics“

QUOTE: expanded noun phrase, time imagery

“fizzy, movie tomorrows“

QUOTE: tense shift, religious imagery, direct address

“you’d teach me the steps on the way home from Mass“

FORM AND STRUCTURE [5]:

• dramatic monologue

• four regular quintains

• free verse

• enjambment

• circular structure

FORM AND STRUCTURE: dramatic monologue

suggests a journey of personal discovery

FORM AND STRUCTURE: four regular quintains

represents stringent gender roles

FORM AND STRUCTURE: free verse [2]

• creates a conversational tone suggesting a natural relationship

• suggests freedom within stringent gender roles

FORM AND STRUCTURE: enjambment

• creates a conversational tone suggesting a natural relationship

• suggests freedom within stringent gender roles

FORM AND STRUCTURE: circular structure

suggests completed journey of discovery and close relationship

CONTEXT [3]:

• written by Carol Ann Duffy

• raised in the 1950s as a Roman Catholic, under stringent expectations of women

• poetry often explores the lives of those dispossessed by society

THEMES [7]:

• memory

• childhood

• gender roles

• aging

• filial love

• maternal/parental relationships

• distance