Analysing the poem 'Before You Were Mine' by Carol Ann Duffy

Duffy opens the poem with a vignette of the mother as glamorous and admirable in her youth before the speaker is born. Duffy uses imagery to convey the sense of awe and wonder felt towards a parental figure. Duffy uses a rhetorical question to suggest the guilt the speaker feels at curtailing the mother's glamorous life. Duffy uses imagery to suggest the consolation a close maternal bond can bring to both mother and child. Duffy uses enjambment and caesuras to convey the speaker’s guilt about the effect she had on her mother’s life.