‘I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on
with your pals…’ may have been used to stress the importance of how long ago it was when her mother was a teenager.
Carol Ann Duffy fantasises about her mother as she is imagined ‘in the ballroom with the thousand eyes.’ The thousand eyes could be the glitter balls in the room but could also be the thousand eyes of men admiring her mother. The poet creates a positive and bright atmosphere in the poem to emphasise how happy her mother must have been when she was a teenager. A little resentment and guilt is felt by the poet as she explains that ‘the thought of me’ doesn’t occur as all this happiness is happening in her mother’s life and I think that she feels like she has let her down.
The third and fourth stanzas are a contrast to the first two stanzas as it shows what life was life for her mother after she had her child and the atmosphere is less positive. These stanzas would be less positive then before because Carol Ann Duffy wrote the poem and it shows how she feels about her mother written from her point of view, but it would be biased to really think her mother was less happy after she had her child, as it might not be true. The words ‘ I’m not here yet’ is a definite statement which sounds like a warning coming from her to say that her mother’s teenage fun would end if she has a baby. The third stanza describes what it was like after her she had her child, ‘loud, possessive yell’ and the use of a rhetorical question in this sentence makes it sound as if she is talking to her mother as she is looking at the photo of her. This makes the poem sound more personal and intimate from Carol Ann Duffy’s view.
The poem develops as Carol Ann Duffy explains her childhood and says that her mother’s ‘ghost clatters’ towards the poet, so she still feels a bit guilty about ruining her mother’s happiness and she refers back to her mother’s past again by saying, ‘I see you, clear as scent, under the tree with its light.’ The words ‘clear as scent’ is a good simile showing that the poet can imagine her mother clearly at his point in time.
Carol Ann Duffy feels her mother has made her childhood happy as she teaches her to dance ‘cha cha cha’ and the sounds are used to make the poem seem more real, which is contrasted by the ‘stamping stars from the wrong pavement’ suggesting that her mother could have been a Hollywood star if she didn’t have a baby. The last sentence ends in a sad way as Carol Ann Duffy still feels the same way as she did before in the poem and refers back to the title of it making this sentence stand out much more than the rest of the lines, ‘that glamorous love lasts where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.’
The structure of the poem is in regular stanzas with four/five lines in each stanza. This shows the regularity of the photos in the photo album and helps the reader to visualise it. The lines are irregular in some places and they are used to give emphasis on a word, for example,
‘in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie
tomorrows.’ The irregularity of this line leaves tomorrow on its own indicating that there is uncertainty of whether she would be going to the cinema ‘tomorrow’ but she might do.
The tone of the poem is generally quite cheerful and happy but there is some guilt as well. Personally I think that the poem is very interesting and Carol Ann Duffy uses imagery effectively in the poem to get her opinions of her mother across to the reader.
