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Question 1

Key points

Answer 1

• Addresses unborn baby directly, exploring mixed feelings about motherhood through a series of vivid, even startling images
• 9 lines in each stanza (2 stanzas in total), each linking to pregnancy (9 months of pregnancy)

Question 2

Theme of the mystery and wonder of pregnancy and new life

Answer 2

• The baby seems impossibly distant and unknowable - a figure independent of the speaker herself. In the end, this unknowability is what the poem celebrates most; her baby represents a ‘clean slate’ who will have to define herself in the world. There is also an implication that the speaker envies this clean slate.
• The speaker compares her unborn baby to a dizzying variety of creatures and objects, including a ‘fish’ and ‘Mexican bean’ suggesting that this new human is both mysterious and full of possibility.
• This wide range of comparisons also underscores the fact that the baby could turn out in all sorts of ways.
• The title itself suggests the possibilities for the baby’s life and the speaker’s lack of sureness about its identity or place in her life

Question 3

Key quotations

Answer 3

• ‘Gilled like a fish’
• ‘From the Fourth of July to All Fools’ Day’
• ‘Vague as fog’
• ‘Jumpy as a Mexican bean’
• ‘Right, like a well-done sum’
• ‘A clean slate’