The Experiences of Motherhood in the Poems `To My `New-born Child` by Sylvia Plath and `Morning Song by Meg Bateman

In exploring this poem the tone of the opening line – “Abortions will not let you forget” – can be viewed as regretful and as offering a kind of warning. As we move through the poem the tone of line four, might be called literally imaginative, as she say; “The singers and workers that never handled the air”. While in lines 5-6 the tone seems at first brutally honest and realistic and then affectionate and realistic. As she continues to lines 7-10, as well as in many lines of this poem, the mother expresses herself as a person who is fully familiar with all the small, subtle realities of parenting. She even expresses her attitudes toward her abortions even more complex.

The poem “Mother Who Gave Me Life”, written by Gwen Harwood explores the extremely personal relationship between a daughter and her mother. It focus’ on the universal role of women as mothers and nurturers throughout time. It explores the intimate moments and memories between a daughter and her mother, and gives us as the reader an insight into the relationship between the two.

The children are unnoticed by others and the mother is the only one that is protecting them. This poem shows the hard times that the mother must face because her children have died. However the mother is coping with them while still protecting her children after they have died, This is the mother's way of coping because she is not yet ready to let go of her children and still wants to care for them. This poem shows this through nature by portraying the mother as a bird who is protecting her nest. Also the poem uses nature by describing the harsh times as a winter wind that has caused harm to the mother and her children.

Opportunities for an individual to develop understanding of themselves stem from the experiences attained on their journey through life. The elements which contribute to life are explored throughout Gwen Harwood’s poems, At Mornington and Mother Who Gave Me Life, where the recollection of various events are presented as influences on the individual’s perception of the continuity of life. Both poems examine the connections between people and death in relation to personal connections with the persona’s father or mother. By encompassing aspects of human nature and life’s journey, Harwood addresses memories and relationships which contribute to one’s awareness of life.

The first stanza begins with a strong statement: "Abortions will not let you forget." It shows the sorrow

A Mother to her Waking Infant was first published in 1790; the poem is narrated by a mother who is focusing her thoughts and words towards her newborn baby. The poem is directed solely at the child of the title, with the mothers words starting as the child awakes, Now in thy dazzling half-oped eye. Joanna Baillie uses a number of techniques to mirror and represent a new mothers emotions and affections for her child. The meter and form of the poem help to emphasise these emotions and the various other uses of language contribute to the effect of the piece on a reader.

In the poem “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath describes her true feelings about her deceased father. Throughout the dialogue, the reader can find many instances that illustrate a great feeling of hatred toward the author’s father. She begins by expressing her fears of her father and how he treated her. Subsequently she conveys her outlook on the wars being fought in Germany. She continues by explaining her life since her father and how it has related to him.

Poets have the power to present their perspectives of the human experience through their poetic voice. Gwen Harwood, Judith Wright, and Bruce Dawe, all Australian poets have all expressed common ideas expressed by their unique poetic voice.They also speak for those who have no voice, such as the soldiers in Bruce Dawe’s poem Homecoming and in Gwen Harwood's poem Mother Who Gave Me Life where she gives a voice to the Mothers. A key theme resinating through all of these poets poems would be their common ideas on society and the role of a mother.

Sylvia Plath and Gwen Harwood tell two very different stories of parental relationships, Mother Who Gave Me Life praising Harwood’s mother and speaking with love and affection, whereas Plath’s Daddy is full of hate for her father. These reflections on the poet’s parental relationships are made using imagery, symbolism and tone.

The tone of this poem is very important. Throughout as I was reading this poem I sensed heartfelt and great concern for the new mother. Also, in this poem one may notice the role of

“I have a little boy at home, A pretty little son; I think sometimes the world is mine In him my only one” (Document 2). In the beginning of the poem the mother talks about how only sometimes the world is hers and her sons. I deem this shows how she wishes to have more time with her beloved family. [In Document 6 we are presented with a photo of numerous children on a tenement overhang, with no adults around.] This shows that parents probably weren’t around a lot of the time, probably at work. [Also in Document 8 it shows children at work.] This means that not only were parents at work, but so were their kids. All together work mostly separated families from each other, which was very sad for

In Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Mother”, the author expresses a lot of her thoughts and feelings in order to share her experience. It is written in the first person and the narrator is adopted by the author herself, Gwendolyn Brooks, who embodies a weaken mother. In this poem, Gwendolyn Brooks tries to portray what abortion is for a woman and to describe the harsh truth about how women feel afterwards. Thus, this poem is mostly targeted to aim females and their feelings. First of all, abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy. First, the narrator uses many imageries, description, and a precise choice of words to explain this emotional topic of abortion. Second, her use

The first stanza of the poem the speaker starts out using the word “you”. By using second person point of view the speaker appears to speak directly to the reader. “You remember the children you got that you did not get” (Brooks 2), here the speaker uses the term “children” to refer to her aborted children, which also gives them an identity. Brooks uses throughout the poem the word “children” instead of “fetuses” which gives the speaker the image of motherhood and a person compared to inanimate object. These are the children she has lost. The speaker goes on throughout this stanza to express to the reader all the things “you” will never get to experience with your children because of the decision to have an abortion. “You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, / Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye” (Brooks 9-10), here the author uses metaphors about food, “snack of them” and “gobbling mother-eye” to illustrate the speakers yearning for motherhood that will never be. This is the only time in the poem other than the title that Brooks will use the word “mother”, all else will be implied that the reader is a mother to

Harwood wrote the poem with relatively simple composition techniques but it provides a rather big impact which helps to give an insight into the life of a mother or nurturer which bares the burdens of children.

In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.