articles about the mother by gwendolyn brooks

Author Biographyīrooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas. The work later appeared in the collection Selected Poems, published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics in 2005. The Mother was originally published in the collection A Street in Bronzeville by Harper & Brothers in 1945. At various points in the poem, and in particular in its final one-word line, Brooks emphasizes that the mother who is the subject of the poem has had multiple abortions. Rather, she focuses on the love she still feels for the children who were never born.

Near the end of the poem, the poet struggles with the concept of life and death, resisting the instinct to label the termination of her pregnancy as a death. She speaks of the fullness of absence in her life, and of the act of abortion as a sin, a crime, but one for which she takes responsibility. Throughout the poem, Brooks writes as a mother looking back on moments she will never share with children whose lives were not brought into being. The language of the work is full of pain, and the images are stark and sorrowful.

Known for works that resonate as both deeply personal and culturally and socially conscious, Brooks writes about the tragic emotional aftermath a mother experiences in the years following an abortion in the 1945 poem The Mother. Critically acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks often focused on the experience of poor urban African Americans in her poetry.

Articles about the mother by gwendolyn brooks