Poetry about childbirth

[Sospira]

In all my reading of poetry, I have hardly come across any poems about childbirth! Surely it's one of the most significant things to happen in a woman's life...

Do you know of any poems ideally written by women about the experience of giving birth, and also pregnancy. I found one sort of interesting one...I can locate it if anyone is interested.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Search here maybe possible:

http://www.emule.com/2poetry/phorum/read.php?4,30437

http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poems/family/mother/

[YesNo]

Which poem did you find, Sospira? I enjoyed those Mohammad Ahmad linked to.

[Delta40]

Good point. Can I write about childbirth 25 years later? Of course I can but with a lifetime perspective attached - the placenta of motherhood which makes giving birth no great feat so much as a single wondrous moment. Just like the pain, the significance is dulled by the deep relationships which are formed.

[Sospira]

YesNo this is the poem. What do you think?

The Moment the Two Worlds Meet

By Sharon Olds

'That’s the moment I always think of – when the

slick, whole body comes out of me,

when they pull it out, not pull it but steady it

as it pushes forth, not catch it, but steady it

as it pushes forth, not catch it but keep their

hands under it as it pulses out,

they are the first to touch it,

and it shines, it glistens with the thick liquid on it.

That’s the moment, while it’s sliding, the limbs

compressed close to the body, the arms

bent like a crab’s rosy legs, the

thighs closely packed plums in heavy syrup, the

legs folded like the white wings of a chiken-

that is the center of life, that moment when the

juiced bluish sphere of the baby is

sliding between the two worlds,

wet, like sex, it is sex,

it is my life opening back and back

as you’d strip the reed from the bud, not strip it but

watch it thrust so it peels itself and the

flower is there, severely folded, and

then it begins to open and dry

but by then the moment is over,

they wipe off the grease and wrap the child in a blanket and

hand it to you entirely in this world.'



It has some striking images which I really like, but the weaker bits let it down. I think it would have worked better as a poetic piece of prose. There are too many pedestrian lines that lack potency for it to be solid, good poetry.

[YesNo]

I recently read Sharon Old's Stag's Leap which I thought was enjoyable. Her writing does sound like prose to me, but I figure it doesn't matter. I liked the idea of the two worlds.

[Margarethe]

I have the same problem with you and look eagerly an answer too.

[Sospira]

I have the same problem with you and look eagerly an answer too.

Who are you talking to and why?

[desiresjab]

I found this poem enjoyable and wholly worthwhile to my own sensibilities. Many of the images are striking and original. I have grudgingly accepted that most contemporary poetry will sound like prose. It is not all a bad thing and has lessons in it. Tight formal unity may work against the experiential nature of some subjects. Sometimes you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Formal unity and scansion would turn this poem into a different experience than the one imparted.

The recognized dearth of childbirth poems probably has to do with most poets traditionally being men, coupled with the fact that the liberation of women was coincident with a casting off of the confinement of tradtional roles, childbirth being paramount among them.

[Sospira]

Tight formal unity may work against the experiential nature of some subjects.


Yes I agree. I actually like simple and prosaic language in a poem, I just don't like the 'not...but...not...but...' thing she keeps using, it's annoying and jarring and uninventive. Having said that, I looked up 'The Stag's Leap' and enjoyed the poems I read, and will read more.

[desiresjab]

Yes I agree. I actually like simple and prosaic language in a poem, I just don't like the 'not...but...not...but...' thing she keeps using, it's annoying and jarring and uninventive.

Good point.

[Sospira]

Thank you Mohammad Ahmad, for the links. Here are the ones I personally liked the most:

Woman to Child

You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.

O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape-
that mirrors still your sleeping shape;
that nurtures still your crescent cell.

I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night.

Judith Wright

------------------------

Sleep Close to Me

Fold of my flesh
I carried in my womb,
tender trembling flesh
sleep close to me.

The partridge sleeps in the wheat
listening to its heartbeat.
Let not my breath disturb you
sleep close to me.

Little tender grass
afraid to live,
don't move from my arms;
sleep close to me.

I have lost everything,
and tremble until I sleep.
Don't move from my breast;
sleep close to me.


Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957 Chile)

[YesNo]

I liked the last stanza of Wright's poem with the link between the light and the night.