Motherhood Poems
Reminder: You can use “I” but you should also be using specific examples from the texts in order to support your interpretation or to analyze. You do not need to answer all questions–they are there to guide you. These should be a minimum of 150 words. This should be a paragraph or two, not just sentences answering each question.
You will need to respond to TWO poems. You may compare them or discuss them separately.
Use any of the following questions to think about the “Pregnancy & Motherhood Poems”:
What tone does the speaker portray in the poem toward the time of pregnancy, the pregnant body, the unborn or born child, and/or being a mother?
Focus on the images and metaphors that are used for pregnancy itself, the mother-child relationship, or the baby. What do these metaphors reveal about how the speaker feels about this experience?
How is the act of childbirth similar to the process of artistic creation; in what ways does the poem use this metaphor (not all of them do)?
What view of motherhood is presented in the poem? What kind of connection between mother and child is explored?
Does the speaker express ambivalence about the self-sacrificing expectations of motherhood? Does the writer celebrate pregnancy and childbirth as a creative and fecund time? Does the perspective of the speaker or the tone shift at all during the course of the poem?
Why might the duties of motherhood invoke special anxiety in women writers? Is it possible to love one’s children and still feel ambivalent about the cultural imperative to ignore one’s own needs, artistic and otherwise, to care for them?
Did you connect personally with any particular poet or poem? Why?
