MotherSongs Poems for, by, and about Mothers

by Gilbert, Sandra M.; Gubar, Susan; O'Hehir, Diana

• ISBN13: 9780393037715
• ISBN10: 0393037711
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-05-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

The editors have included traditional ballads about maternity and courtly elegies for or by mothers as well as landmark nineteenth-century tributes to mothers and early twentieth-century meditations on motherhood. MotherSongs opens with poems about pregnancy, labor, delivery, and nursing and moves to poems about women raising children, delighting in their growth, or mourning their loss. The volume then turns to poems by sons and daughters who "remember mama." Mythic mothers and mother goddesses, moral or political reflections on maternity, and philosophical analyses of the meaning of motherhood are also represented. Taken together, the works collected here bear witness to the powerful ways in which motherhood has been transformed into art and artistry has been shaped by maternity.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. 17
With Child	p. 27
Poems for the New	p. 28
The Buddha in the Womb	p. 29
Pregnancy	p. 31
You're	p. 32
Enceinte	p. 33
The Stethoscope	p. 34
A Timepiece	p. 35
Before the Birth of One of Her Children	p. 36
The Expectant Father	p. 37
Weathering Out	p. 38
Letter in July	p. 39
Pregnant Poets Swim Lake Tarleton, New Hampshire	p. 40
Notes from the Delivery Room	p. 45
Sounding	p. 46
Loba in Childbed	p. 47
The Loba Sings to Her Cub	p. 50
Fifteen	p. 51
From Vision and Prayer	p. 52
Hello	p. 53
The Cambridge Afternoon Was Grey	p. 54
Infant Sorrow	p. 55
Infant	p. 56
From The Two-Part Prelude	p. 57
Morning Song	p. 59
Night Light	p. 60
The Chair by the Window	p. 60
Elizabeth Near and Far	p. 61
The New Toy	p. 62
Black Baby	p. 63
A Cradle Song	p. 64
Night Feeding	p. 65
Night Feed	p. 66
Eating Babies	p. 68
Upon Her Soothing Breast	p. 70
Nick and the Candlestick	p. 71
Unfinished Business	p. 73
Now That I Am Forever with Child	p. 79
Maternity	p. 80
The Gift	p. 80
Looking at Them Asleep	p. 81
Child	p. 83
Night-Pieces: For a Child	p. 83
She said ...	p. 85
To Miss Charlotte Pulteney in Her Mother's Arms	p. 85
Seizure	p. 86
An April Fool's Day Present for My Daughter Elisabeth	p. 88
Spelling	p. 89
For Andrew	p. 91
For a Five-Year-Old	p. 92
Daughter, Daughter	p. 92
Return	p. 93
Combing	p. 94
Hair	p. 96
The Dream of My Daughter	p. 97
Holding On	p. 98
Identifying Things	p. 100
Mothers, Daughters	p. 102
I Have Three Daughters	p. 104
A Mother's Hearse	p. 105
To Welcome a Changeling	p. 106
Mother to Son	p. 108
Family Reunion	p. 109
Advice	p. 111
Niobe	p. 115
Elegy, the Fertility Specialist	p. 115
Motherhood	p. 117
The Mother	p. 117
The Lost Baby Poem	p. 119
Miscarriage	p. 120
Maternity	p. 121
Orinda upon Little Hector Philips	p. 122
Epitaph on Her Son H.P. at St Syth's Church	p. 123
Child Burial	p. 124
In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet	p. 126
On the Death of an Infant of Five Years Old	p. 127
The Slave Mother	p. 127
Declared Not Fit	p. 129
Mother and Poet	p. 131
Come up from the Fields Father	p. 137
Upon the gallows hung a wretch	p. 140
The Wife of Usher's Well	p. 140
My Boy Jack	p. 142
Piano	p. 147
Nurse	p. 148
I Remember Haifa Being Lovely But	p. 149
No Quarrels Today	p. 150
During Fever	p. 153
From a Heart of Rice Straw	p. 155
The Survivors	p. 157
My Mother's Lips	p. 158
The Night Before Good-bye	p. 161
Cactus	p. 162
Frying Trout While Drunk	p. 163
Implicature	p. 164
The Intruder	p. 165
Widows	p. 167
My Mother with Purse the Summer They Murdered the Spanish Poet	p. 168
Housewife	p. 175
Inheritance	p. 175
For My Mother	p. 176
A Grief Beyond Remedy	p. 177
The Photos	p. 180
Mother II	p. 182
Why My Mother Made Me	p. 184
Christmas Eve	p. 185
Heredity	p. 188
Trinity Churchyard	p. 189
The Blessing	p. 191
if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have	p. 199
Mother o' Mine	p. 200
The courage that my mother had	p. 200
Women	p. 201
The Adversary	p. 202
My Mother in Three Acts	p. 203
My Mama moved among the days	p. 204
In the Ocean	p. 204
The Mother Before Memory	p. 206
Dear Mama (4)	p. 208
My mother was a braid of black smoke	p. 209
A Poem for Sarah's Mother	p. 210
In an Iridescent Time	p. 211
From the House of Yemanja	p. 212
Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome	p. 214
Mi Mama, the Playgirl	p. 214
The old face of the mother of many children	p. 219
Last Will	p. 220
My Mother Remembers That She Was Beautiful	p. 222
Eightythree	p. 223
The 90th Year	p. 224
The Song of the Old Mother	p. 226
The Youngest Daughter	p. 227
Jewish Mother	p. 229
Nursing: Mother	p. 230
Soloing	p. 234
Lucinda Matlock	p. 235
The Song of Absinthe Granny	p. 236
Lineage	p. 243
Grandmother	p. 243
The Morning Baking	p. 244
Sestina	p. 245
My Grandmother	p. 247
The Last Words of My English Grandmother	p. 248
More Blues and the Abstract Truth	p. 250
My Grandmother's Love Letters	p. 251
Green Rain	p. 253
Claims	p. 254
My Grandmother's Ghost	p. 255
My Grandmother in Paris	p. 255
Birds on a Powerline	p. 258
One We Knew	p. 260
From Mourning Pictures	p. 265
Sorrow	p. 265
The Bride	p. 266
Sailing Home from Rapallo	p. 267
A Woman Mourned by Daughters	p. 269
Autumn 1980	p. 270
Upon a Lady that dyed in child-bed, and left a daughter behind her	p. 273
Upon a young mother of many children	p. 274
C.L.M.	p. 274
In Memory of My Mother	p. 275
From On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture out of Norfolk	p. 277
Museum Out of Mind	p. 279
The Fare	p. 282
Elegy for My Mother	p. 283
Kaddish	p. 284
For a Fifty-Year-Old Woman in Stockholm	p. 289
The White Goddess	p. 289
In the Carolinas	p. 290
Sweet Mountains - Yet tell Me no lie	p. 291
The Earthwoman and the Waterwoman	p. 292
Kore in Hades	p. 292
Medea the Sorceress	p. 294
Fragment of an Ode to Maia	p. 297
From My Sisters, O My Sisters	p. 298
Eve to Her Daughters	p. 299
the astrologer predicts at mary's birth	p. 302
I Sing of a Maiden	p. 303
Ana[mary/army]gram	p. 304
On the Blessed Virgins bashfulnesse	p. 304
Annunciation	p. 305
Nativitie	p. 305
The Virgin Mary	p. 306
The Mother of God	p. 307
Observation	p. 308
The Virgin Mary	p. 308
Another	p. 309
Madame La Fleurie	p. 309
My Mother Would Be a Falconress	p. 310
Pensive on Her Dead Gazing	p. 314
Unfolded out of the Folds	p. 319
The Womb	p. 320
Kangaroo	p. 321
Sheep	p. 324
bee mother	p. 327
The Paper Nautilus	p. 329
Christmas Carols	p. 330
Parentage	p. 332
Solomon's Sword	p. 332
A Fable	p. 334
What Your Mother Tells You Now	p. 336
The Envelope	p. 336
The Language of the Brag	p. 337
Contributors' Notes	p. 339
Credits	p. 355
Index	p. 371
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