Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Brooks, Gwendolyn. "The Mother" and "The Lovers of the Poor."

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15829

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172089

3 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed reading Gwendolyn Brook's "The Mother" it seemed as though she or whomever she was discussing in through the poem [which I believe was her because of the "I"] obviously had had more than one abortion. Continuely reading through the poem, I also felt that she was upset because she had the abortion because she did not have time to really interact with her child because of the abortion. However, she stated that, "I loved, I loved you All" which signified that [I think] that if she was able and probably financially stable to keep her child/children that she would have and would have enjoyed every piece of joy that would have brought to her.
    Brooks was born during the days of the Great Depression which I did my presentation on and then it seemed that women founf it neccessary to have abortions because they were stable to keep them. Therefore I thought of it like this, if they knew that they did not have birth control or anything to prevent them from having babies, then why invite themselves into having sex? I know that there are a few exceptions like rape, but I know that not all the women during the Great Depression were raped, if so that's obsured.

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  2. In my Cont. Lit class last semester, Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the writers we examined. One thing I love about the poem "the mother" is Brooks uses clear and honest language through the speaker's voice. Though the speaker is not necessarily Brooks herself, she could identify with many of the problems young black women faced at the time. You can see in almost all of her later works the struggles these girls faced with identity, relationships with mothers as well as lovers, respect in a violent white vs. black world, poor living conditions etc.
    Something that didn't really occur to me until reading "the mother" again is that in this poem the speaker is not just lamenting for lost children, but it also seems she is apologizing to those whose lives might have been affected by their existence too: "your stilted or lovely loves", people who will miss out knowing these children.It doesn't seem as if the speaker is sad at first, since during the first stanza she is speaking to a general audience of mothers who have aborted children, a growing number of young women who felt they had no other choice. But once she reaches the second stanza the narrator starts to show her sadness in taking these opportunities away from her own unborn kids, and to me it seems like this is the most important part. She fully comprehends the consequences of her actions. By the third stanza, the reader knows she has accepted fate. She can't call abortion any other name than what it really is, a waste.

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  3. I enjoyed reading "The Mother." It is realistic, down-to-earth, and forgiving. For the time it was written, it really reflects the pain that women experienced from being unfit to be a real mother. The speaker is both sad and relieved, which leads me to believe that her choice was made before she conceived the child. Even today, abortion is shunned--sometimes "glorified" for a lack of better words, by means of a women's reproductive rights. The speaker of the poem seems to be speaking for all women, by apologizing for the loss of lives, or perhaps trying to justify the reasons that women chose to abort their pregnancy. Abortion is both a sad and happy event; it can save a woman's livelihood, or it can cause extreme mental torment that cannot be escaped, causing a woman to be haunted by the experience. In my own experience, my best friend got pregnant at age 19, an decided to have an abortion--which actually saved her life, let her finish her college degree, and move on with her life. Sad as it may be, sometimes it is for the best.

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