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Motherhood

Poems for, by, and about Mothers

Edited by Heather Johnson 23 October 2003

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Table of Contents

Introduction 3-4

ou’re” by Sylvia Plath 5

1

8

1

Poems:

“Y

“Infant Sorrow” by William Blake 6

“A Cradle Song” by William Blake 7

“Nick and the Candlestick” by Sylvia Plath 8-9

“Spelling” by Margaret Atwood 10-1

“Looking at Them Asleep” by Sharon Olds 12

“Piano” by D.H. Lawrence 13

“Advice” by Ruth Stone 14

“Mother o’ Mine” by Rudyard Kipling 15

“Women” by Alice Walker 16

Biographical Sketches 17-1

Conclusion 19

Bibliography 20-2

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Introduction

The selected poems in this anthology represent all of the facets of motherhood, including

pregnancy, raising small children, raising adult children, and observing and remembering mothers. The

unique aspect of these poems is that that they have only been published recently. In the anthology

Motherhood, it is pointed out that:

Although maternity has been celebrated and consecrated for centuries,

t women gained legal,

th and

th century m

and although as primary caretakers mothers have always helped shape

civilization, poets have just in the last few decades begun to speak as

mothers and about mothers with unprecedented complexity, intensity,

and subtlety (17).

One of the reasons the situation changed in the twentieth century is tha

political, social, economic and intellectual rights.

The poems included in this anthology are both written by modern women poets and 18

19 en. Sylvia Plath is one of the contemporary poets who writes metaphorically in free

verse about anticipating the birth of her baby in uttero. In the poem “You’re,” Plath writes, “Vague

as fog and looked for like mail. . . A clean slate, with your own face on” (lines 10 & 18) to describe the

new life that grows inside her. The message is quite different compared to the masculine poets of

earlier centuries who perhaps “scoffed at the emotional excesses they associated with versified mother

love” (Gilbert 18). A Sylvia Plath Overview in Feminist Writers concludes:

Her struggles, however (in life and in poetry), were clearly understood by her to

be gendered and often, as a result, unjust. She struggled to articulate the

contradictions that a woman who wanted to be both devoted wife and mother

and a successful creative writer faced in the late 1950s and 1960s. That her

struggles have proved inspirational, fascinating, and tragic to subsequent

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generations of readers is testimony to the enduring relevance of her insights

and to the stunning brilliance of her work (Devoney n. pag).

I P for example, D.H. Lawrence writes about an early boyhood m

n “The iano”, emory and how, as he

eavily on the mind, spirits, or senses of; worry; trouble 2)

enters manhood, he yearns for his boyhood years. This is clearly a different approach between a man

and a woman’s perspective on motherhood.

Oppress is defined as :”1) to weigh h

to keep down by the cruel or unjust use of power or authority: rule harshly; tyrannize over 3) to crush;

trample down; to over power; subdue” (The New American Webster’s Dictionary 715). Oppression

based upon gender is omnipresent throughout history and in contemporary times. The female discussion

of motherhood in the form of prose or poetry, is no exception, but rather the epitome of gender

oppression in the past, however changing over the last few decades

In the anthology

Motherhood,, the editors write, “To many thinkers, the words “mother” and

porary women poets and the few

“poet” seemed to be contradictory terms. . . it was thought that a poet had to have what the age saw

as “masculine” qualities of authority and assertiveness (Gilbert 18).

The poems selected for this anthology that are written by the contem

selected men poets are for, by and about mothers, as the subtitle indicates. Thankfully, it is no longer

necessary for women to take on a masculine tone or attitude to illustrate the beauty of maternity by

including their personal experiences and deepest emotions.

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You’re By Sylvia Plath

Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,

,

like mail.

.

. n face on.

1961

Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spoolTrawling your dark as owls do. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth Of July to All Fool's Day, O high-riser, my little loaf. Vague as fog and looked forFarther off than Australia. Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawnSnug as a bud and at home Like a sprat in a pickle jug. A creel of eels, all ripples. Jumpy as a Mexican bean. Right, like a well-done sumA clean slate, with your ow

The poetic form used in “You’re” is free verse. Plath uses a series of metaphors such as “moon skulled,” “gilled like a fish” and “little loaf”

to symbolize the physical characteristics of the fetus (lines2, 3, & 9). Her anticipation for the birth is depicted by the metaphor, “Vague as fog and looked for like mail./ Farther off than Australia” (lines 10 & 11). This is a very playful poem by Plath. One can sense her playfulnesswith words and happiness with the experience.

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Infant Sorrow By William Blake

y mother groaned, my father wept; nto the dangerous world I leapt,

nds: triving against my swaddling bands:

1794

MIHelpless, naked, piping loud, Like a fiend hid in a cloud. Struggling in my father’s haSBound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mother’s breast.

Blake uses the poetic form quatrain with a four line stanza rhyming the first two and the second two lines.

ild at s to the child as

en

nd”

.th

“Infant Sorrow” describes the helplessness of a newborn chthe mercy of his mother for survival. Blake refer“Helpless, naked piping loud,/ Like a fiend hid in a cloud” (lines 3 & 4) which has mixed meanings of helplessness and obsession. WhBlake uses the word “fiend,” he is most likely using the informal meaning of one who is desperately in need (line 4). The final lines inthe poem include the painful words, “struggling, striving, and bouthat make the birth experience negative until the infant consoles himself by sulking on the mother, near the food source (lines 5, 6 & 7) This image is clearly one from a male perspective of the 18century.

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A Cradle Song By William Blake

Sweet dreams form a shade, O’er my lovely infants head.

eams,

eave thy brows an infant crown.

over over my delight. s,

guiles.

hase not slumber from thy eyes,

ll creation slept and smil’d.

ep

oly image I can trace. e. for me

hen he was an infant small.

ee,

ho became an infant small, iles,

les.

1789

Sweet dreams of pleasant strBy happy silent moony beams Sweet sleep with soft down.

Blake writes this poem also using a quatrain, four-

s the e, “Sweet smiles

eel

s such as, Thy m r

that

WSweet sleep Angel mild, Hover o’er my happy child. line stanza with the first two

and the last two lines rhyming. When Blake usesynecdochin the night” and “Sweet sleep with soft down,” he is meaning for the child to fa sense of security and peacefulness during the night(lines 5 & 9). The end of the poem uses metaphor“ aker lay and wept fome” and “Heavenly face smiles on thee” to represent the Lord’s protection over the sleeping child (lines 24 & 28).

Sweet smiles in the night, HSweet smiles Mothers smileAll the livelong night be Sweet moans, dovelike sighs, CSweet moans, sweeter smiles, All the dovelike moans beguiles. Sleep sleep happy child, ASleep sleep, happy sleep. While o’er thee thy mother we Sweet babe in thy face, HSweet babe once like theThy maker lay and wept Wept for me for thee for all, WThou his image ever see. Heavenly face that smiles on th Smiles on thee on me on all, WInfant smiles are His own smHeaven & earth to peace begui

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Nick and the Candlestick By Sylvia Plath

I am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites

d boredom. lack bat airs

shawls, old homicides.

s.

cicles, old echoer. hite,

nd the fish, the fish---- anes of ice,

piranha

out of my live toes. he candle

love, how did you get here?

ng, even in sleep, our crossed position.

1962

Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its deaB Wrap me, raggyCThey weld to me like plum Old cave of calcium IEven the newts are w Those holy Joes. AChrist! They are p A vice of knives, AReligion, drinking Its first communionTGulps and recovers its small altitude, Its yellows hearten. OO embryo RememberiYThe blood blooms clean

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In you, ruby. The pain

s not yours.

have hung our cave with roses. gs----

na. et the stars

ddress,

toms that cripple drip ell,

olid the spaces lean on, envious. in the barn.

You wake to i Love, love, IWith soft ru The last of VictoriaLPlummet to their dark a Let the mercuric AInto the terrible w You are the one SYou are the baby

The poem “Nick and the Candlestick” is another free verse written by Plath about the birth of a child (most likely one of her own).

bor (lines

ce is heard throughout the poem as

When Plath uses the metaphorical image of “panes of ice” and “a vice of knives” she helps the reader to see and feel the pain of la15 & 16). Alliteration is present in the lines, “The blood blooms clean” and “Wrap me, raggy shawls” and assonanwell, whereby Plath conveys a message with “Those holy joes” and “black bat airs” (lines 6, 7, 13, & 27). During this difficult time of giving birth, she seems to be frustrated with religion as she feels on her ownonly the baby to comfort her.

with

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Spelling By Margaret Atwood

My daughter plays on the floor with plastic letters,

,

men nied themselves daughters,

s.

poem is not a child.

the story the woman caught in the war

hs tied

ch, r mouth covered by leather

d ter a word is power.

uage falls away om the hot bones, at the point

1982

red, blue & hard yellow, learning how to spellspelling, how to make spells. I wonder how many wodeclosed themselves in rooms, drew the curtains so they could mainline word A child is not a poem, a There is no either / or. However. I return toof& in labour, her thigtogether by the enemy so she could not give birth. Ancestress: the burning witheto strangle words. A word after a woraf At the point where langfrwhere the rock breaks open and darknessflows out of it like blood, at the melting point of granite when the bones know they are hollow & the word

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splits & doubles & speaks the truth & the body

spell? lood, sky & the sun,

first name,

itself becomes a mouth. This is a metaphor. How do you learn toByour own name first, your first naming, youryour first word.

Spelling is a free verse poem that describes a mother whom is most likely the poet herself, watching her daughter as she learns how to spell.

to

men. One woman had her

to fter a word/ after a word is power” (lines 25-26).

The daughter is playing with the building blocks that led her mother, the poet, to be the person she has become. The struggle is whether the choicehave a child and give up the writing is worth it. Atwood works through her feelings by remembering the women past whom were tortured and stifled just for being wo“thighs tied/ together by the enemy/ so she could not give birth” during a war and another had “her mouth covered by leather/ to strangle words” (lines 19-21 & 23-24). Atwood recognizes the importance of women to be educated and have a voice, “A word aThe metaphor in the poem is literally pointed out by Atwood. The empowerment of her daughter is reflected in the lines “The truth and the body/ itself becomes a mouth” (lines 35-36).

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Looking at Them Asleep Sharon Olds

When I come home late at night and go in to kiss the children, see my girl with her arm curled around her head,

ted but enough,

rolled the

aled completion, the son he is sideways in his bed,

lids you d

rkness, and his the climb

hand

his arms er

s swallowed a deer, e’ll

t and sit

es to me and says this boy.

1987

Iher face deep in unconsciousness-so deeply centered she is in her dark self, her mouth slightly puffed like one saslightly pouted like one who hasn’t hadher eyes so closed you would think they have

This is a beautiful narrative, free verse poem

s to l

harac he

“the dry

n

iris around to face the back of her head, the eyeball marble-naked under that

about a mother observingher two children sleeping and recognizing their unique differences. Olds uses similedescribe the physicac teristics and positionof the children when ssees her son with “one knee up as if he is climbing/ sharp stairs upinto the night” and dirty boyish palm/resting like a cookie.” (lines 13-14 & 22-23) There are many similes throughout that help us to understand how olds sees her beloved soand daughter.

thick satisfied desiring lid, she lies on her back in abandon and seand the son in his room, oh one knee up as if he is climbing sharp stairs up into the night, and under his thin quivering eyeknow his eyes are wide open anstaring and glazed, the blue in them so anxious and crystally in all this damouth is open, he is breathing hard fromand panting a bit, his brow is crumpled and pale, his long fingers curved, his hand open, and in the center of each the dry dirty boyish palm resting like a cookie. I look at him in his quest, the thin muscles of passionate and tense, I look at her with hface like the face of a snake who hacontent, content-and I know if I wake her shsmile and turn her face toward me though half asleep and open her eyes and I know if I wake him he’ll jerk and say Don’up and stare about him in blue unrecognition, oh my Lord how I know these two. When love comWho do you know, I say This girl,

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Piano By D.H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

the tingling strings o smiles as she sings.

etrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong outside

uide.

ith the great black piano appassionato. The glamor

for the past.

1964

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother wh In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song BTo the old Sunday evenings at home, with winterAnd hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our g So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor WOf childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child

D.H. Lawrence writes a quatrain poem rhyming the first two and the last two lines of the four stanzas.

other playing the piano.

he writes, “Softly, in the dusk a woman is ingin

He clearly is being nostalgic and yearning for his boyhood by remembering a special time with his mThis is a narrative poem whereby Lawrence uses the piano as a symbol for the happy times in his childhood when he felt safe and loved as he refers to “the old Sunday evenings at home with the winter outside/ And hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide” (lines 7-8). This poem is very likely to be an elegy about Lawrence’s mother. In the opening s g to me,/ Taking me back down the vista of years” which ismost likely a memory of his mother who has passed away (lines 1-2).

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Advice By Ruth Stone

My hazard wouldn’t be yours, not ever: But every doom, like a hazelnut, comes down

se words. try to say

.

1987

To its own worm. So I am rocking here Like any granny with her apron over her head Saying, lordy me. It’s my trouble. There’s nothing to be learned this way. If I heard a girl crying help I would go to save her: But you hardly ever hear thoDear children, you must Something when you are in need. Don’t confuse hunger with greed: And don’t wait until you are dead

Ruth Stone writes a free verse poem about a mother who wants to give her children advice to protect them. Her tone is a bit

her o much to say in order to protect them

om t

on (line 2). This

helpless and desperate. She wants to help but she “hardly ever hears the words” (line 9). The irony is that now she is an old woman removed fromchildren and now she has sfr he world. Why was it not said before? The metaphor used for “doom” is a “hazelnut falling down”which hardly seems like an accurate comparismetaphor leads one to think the old woman has lost some perspective on the dangers of life.

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Mother o’ Mine By Rudyard Kipling

IF I were hanged on the highest hill,

other o’ mine, 0 mother o’ mine! till,

, Mother o’ mine, 0 mother o’ mine!

to me,

I know whose prayers would make me whole,

MI know whose love would follow me sMother o’ mine, 0 mother o’ mine!

If I were drowned in the deepest sea

I know whose tears would come downMother o’ mine, 0 mother o’ mine!

If I were damned of body and soul,

Mother o’ mine, 0 mother o’ mine!

“Mother O’ Mine” is a quatrain with the first and third lines rhyming and the second and fourth lines rhyming. There is a

is quite sentimental a

ng “When I am drowned in e deepest sea, . . ./ I know

&

rhythm that one could easily put to music. Kipling writes a narrative poem about the endless and enduring love a mother has for her child. Itfor its time which makes it more appropriate to be written by man. Hyperbole is the primary usage in this poem. When Kipliwrites, thwhose tears would come down to me,” he wants the reader to feel how much love, beyond all reason, a mother exhumes (lines 57)

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Women By Alice Walker

They were women then My mama’a generation

s wn

d white

nerals

ined

s

ey knew what we

1986

Husky of voice-Stout ofStep With fists as well as HandHow they battered doDoors And ironed StarcheShirts How they led ArmiesHeadragged GeAcross mFields Booby-trappedDitchesTo discover bookDesks A place for us How thMust know Without knowing a page Of it Themselves.

The poem “Women” is written in free verse by a woman, Alice Walker, about the women of her mother’s generation.

s” (lines 7-8 & 14-e

There is an allusion of wartime that is symbolized by “battered down doors,” “mined fields,” and “headragged general16) The only reason the allusion exists is because Walker does not comright out and use the term war, instead she paints a picture of an event thatthe women of her mother’s generation had to endure in order to better thelives of their children. Walker writes that these women had to lead armies “across mined/ fields/ booby-trapped/ ditches” to get to a place where they could educate their children symbolized by “books” and “desks” (lines 15-20).

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Biographical Sketches

Atwood, Margaret (1939- )

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottowa, Canada where she wrote poems, short stories, and

t book of poems, Double Perephonenovels.She published her firs , in 1962. Her books have received

ent of critical acclaim in the United States, Europe, and her native Canada, and she has been the recipi

numerous literary awards. Atwood's feminist concerns also emerge clearly in her novels, The Edible

Woman, Surfacing, Life before Man, Bodily Harm, and The Handmaid's Tale (Almanac of Famous

People).

Blake, William (1757-1827)

William Blake was born in the Soho district of London apprenticed to an engraver. Author of

rks including Marriage of Heaven

mystical and metaphysical wo and Hell (1793), America: A Prophecy

(1793),Europe: A Prophecy (1794), Book of Urizen (1794), Book of Ahania (1795), Book of Los

(1795), and of symbolic poems terminating with Milton (1808) and Jerusalem (1820). Blake also made

illustrations for Bible, Paradise Lost, Blair's The Grave, Pastorals of Virgil, etc.(Merriam-Webste

Biographical Dictionary).

r’s

36)Kipling, Rudyard (1865-19

Rudyard Kipling was an English writer, born in India, reared in England, and returned to India

the Civil & Military Gazette and Pioneer. He began writing verse

in 1882 on the editorial staff of

and tales while in India and was awarded The Nobel prize for literature in 1907. Among his works

were Departmental Ditties (1886), Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), Wee Willie Winkie (1888), The

Jungle Book (1894) and many, many more (Almanac of Famous People).

Lawrence, D.H. (1885-1930)

D.H.. Lawrence was born in Nottingham, England. The English novelist, poet, and essayist took

ship between men and women, which he regarded as disastrously wrong as his major theme, the relation

in his time. The quarreling of his parents and the consequent damage to the children, became the

subject of perhaps his most famous novel, Sons and Lovers (1913). Critics immediately regarded it as a

brilliant illustration of Sigmund Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex. But in Lady Chatterley's

Johnson 18

Lover, his last full-length novel, Lawrence went much further. The book was banned in England,

this was followed by the seizure of the manuscript of his poems

and

Pansies (Kennedy and Gioia).

Sharon Olds (1942- )

born in San Francisco and attended Stanford and Columbia University. Her Sharon Olds was

first collection of poems was Satan Says (1980), and her second volume, The Dead and the Living,

won the Lamont Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. She currently teaches at New Yo

University (Kennedy and Gioia).

rk

lath, Sylvia (1932-1963)P

in Boston. She was the dasughter of German immigrants who taught at Sylvia Plath was born

Boston University. Plath was a scholarship winner at Smith College and received early publication,

however she struggled with mental illness for which she underwent shock therapy. Plath committed

suicide leaving two children and the manuscript of poems that were later published in the highly

acclaimed Ariel (1965). Other major collections of Plath's poems are Crossing the Water (1971) and

Winter Trees (London, 1971; New York, 1972); her prose includes Letters Home: Correspondence

1950-1963 (1975), edited by Aurelia Schober Plath, and a collection of short stories, Johnny Panic and

the Bible of Dreams (1979) (Almanac of Famous People).

Stone, Ruth (1915- )

important, relatively unknown, American poet. Stone's first book of verse, In an Ruth Stone is an

Iridescent Time, was published in 1958. Other works include Cheap: New Poems and Ballads (1975)

and Second Hand Coat (1991) (Almanac of Famous People).

Walker, Alice (1944- )

born in Eatonton, Georgia, a southern town where most African Americans Alice Walker was

toiled at the difficult job of tenant farming. Her writing reflects these roots, where black vernacular

was prominent and the stamp of slavery and oppression were still present. Walker has earned critical

and popular acclaim as a major American novelist and intellectual. Her literary reputation was secured

with her Pulitzer-Prize-winning third novel, The Color Purple, which was transformed into a popular

film by Steven Spielberg (Merriam-Webster’s Biological Dictionary).

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Conclusion

I chose the theme motherhood strictly for personal reasons. I am nine months

pregnant and prepared to deliver my third da

who have changed my life more than I could put into words. So when I read poetry

and emotions I have experienced, it moved me to create this anthology with the theme of

motherhood.

searched for this anthology, I was most impressed with

Sylvia Plath. I not only loved her poems and would have liked to include more, but I

suicide at thirty, but wrote such happy whimsical poems about pregnancy and

motherhood. It seemed to be the only time she was truly happy.

I also have an interest in women’s history and find it fascinating that there are

little to no poems written by women about maternity issues; something so significant to

order to be considered “equals” in our society. A woman should be able to celebrate her

e

same as her male counterpart.

ughter. I have a nine and ten year old now

written by such incredibly talented women writers who were able to convey feelings

Out of all of the poets I re

found it intriguing that she suffered from depression, wrote dark poetry, committed

the female gender. It is about time we no longer have to look and behave like men in

womanhood, femininity, and compassion if she so chooses and rank equal to but not th

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Bibliography

Almanac of Famous People, 7th ed. Gale Group, 2000. Reproduced in Biography

Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group. 2003.

http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC

Atwood, Margaret. “Spelling.” Mother Songs. New York: W.W. Norton

And Company, Inc., 1995.

Blake, William. “A Cradle Song.” Mother Songs. New York: W.W. Norton

And Company, Inc., 1995.

Blake, William. “Infant Sorrow.” Mother Songs. New York: W.W. Norton

And Company, Inc., 1995.

Devoney Looser, "Sylvia Plath: Overview" in Feminist Writers, edited by Pamela Kester-

Shelton, St. James Press, 1996. Literature Resource Center. Gale Group. Manatee

Community Coll. Lib., Bradenton. 10 Sept. 2003 <http://galenet.galegroup.com

Gilbert, Sandra, Susan Gubar, Diana O’Hehir. Mother Songs. New York: W.W. Norton

And Company, Inc., 1995.

Kennedy, X.J., Dana Gioia. Literature, An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.

7 ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1998.

Kipling, Rudyard. “Mother o’ Mine.” Mother Songs.

th

New York: W.W. Norton

And Company, Inc., 1995.

Lawrence, D.H. “The Piano.” Literature, An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.

7 ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1998.

Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary

th

. Merriam-Webster Incorporated, 1995.

Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group.

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2003. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC

“oppress.” The New American Webster Dictionary. 3rd ed. New York: the Penguin

Group, 1995. 715.

Plath, Sylvia. “Nick and the Candlestick.” Mother Songs. New York: W.W. Norton

And Company, Inc., 1995.

Plath, Sylvia. “You’re.” Mother Songs. New York: W.W. Norton

And Company, Inc., 1995.

Walker, Alice. “Women.” Mother Songs. New York: W.W. Norton

And Company, Inc., 1995.