Gwendolyn Brooks Guilt, Blame, Mourning, And Regret

Gwendolyn Brooks was an African American poet . Her first poem was ,“ Eventide”, :

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.

Gwendolyn brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas. Her family moved to Chicago during the great migration when Brooks was six weeks old. Her first poem was published when she was 13 and at the age of 17, she already had a series of poems published in the poetry column “Lights and shadows” in the Chicago defender newspaper. . After working for The NAACP, she began to write poems that focus on urban poor blacks. Those poems were later published as a collection in 1945. The collection was titled A Street in Bronzeville. A street in bronzeville received critical acclaim but it was her next work, Annie Allen, that was got her the Pulitzer Prize. She lived in Chicago until her death on December 3, 2000 at age of 83.

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.

Gwendolyn Brooks is the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. She has also received a lot of awards and fellowships throughout her life. Born in 1917, she started her writing career in poetry at an early age, publishing her first poem in 1930. 1967 was a turning point in her career as it was in this year that she attended the Fisk University Second Black Writers' Conference. In this conference, she has decided to involve herself in the Black Arts Movement. While awareness of social issues and elements of protest is found generally in all her works, some of her critics found in her work an angrier tone after joining the movement.

The spacing and structure of the poem is set up to allow flow and momentum in the poem and its narrative. The speaker’s voice is present with emotion as emphasised in a natural rhythm of thought offering an honest and bare interpretation of motherhood. The open “blank space” of the poem encourages a calm and breathy atmosphere, fulfilling a mood of tranquility and bliss. Each stanza is short with a couple quick fragmented thoughts before closing each section with the power of a single word. Each stanza breaks apart a separate thought filled with a loving passion the speaker uses to stress the beauty, wonder, and over-flowing love present in motherhood. To better the structure, the poem itself is broken into three parts, each representing a stage of motherhood. The first segment of motherhood that is represented is during the moments while the baby is still in the womb and the mother waits in anticipation for the baby to arrive. This “honeymoon” phase is expressed with a tone filtered through a perception of rose-coloured glasses and excitement as the mother is in utter bliss to carry a life into the world. The

     Gwendolyn Brooks is the female poet who has been most responsive to changes in the black community, particularly in the community’s vision of itself. The first African American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize; she was considered one of America’s most distinguished poets well before the age of fifty. Known for her technical artistry, she has succeeded in forms as disparate as Italian terza rima and the blues. She has been praised for her wisdom and insight into the African Experience in America. Her works reflect both the paradises and the hells of the black people of the world. Her writing is objective, but her characters speak for themselves. Although the

There, she started to write at the age of seven and published her first poem at 13. After she completed school, Gwendolyn Brooks found herself working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and continued to write about the struggles of African Americans in her community. During Gwendolyn Brooks’s career she expanded the topic of her writings. Between 1940-1960’s, her writings were about the oppression of blacks and women of all colors in her community, and she poetically criticized the shocking prejudice that African Americans had for one another. However, during 1960’s she developed a new attitude, due to her growing political awareness. She began to expand her poetry from the day-to-day life of the African Americans in her community, to writing about the wider world and the racial struggles of African American people everywhere. She then brought back all of her accomplishments to her community by reading her poems to children at various venues. By the end of her life, she had inspired thousands of young

She says that the "child" had been by her side until "snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true" (line 3). Basically she is saying a trusted person “snatched” her work from her without permission to take them to England to be printed. Had it not been for her brother-in-law taking her work back to England and getting them printed they may have never been known. The intimacy and feeling she shares with her work is like that of a mother and child and that bond was infringed upon when her work was "exposed to public view" (line 4). The intrusion of her brother-in-law getting her work printed is the cause of feeling that follow. Ironically the next thing she talks is the shame she has been thrust upon her by not being able to perfect the work before it was published. This is illustrated in line five where she writes, “Made thee in rags,” as to say her work is like a child dressed in rags.

It is possible that the narrator is trying to reassure herself in this passage by claiming that the child was never made, but then why write the poem to her unborn children?

Plath starts her poem out negatively, ‘barely daring to breathe or Achoo’, with a distinct repetition of the ‘oo’ sounds in ‘Achoo’, ‘do’, ‘shoe’ and ‘du’ creating a childlike, nursery rhyme style of delivery that contrasts greatly with the violent and dark themes. Harwood begins on a significantly more positive if wistful note, ‘forgive me the wisdom I would not learn from you’ positioning her mother as a wise and positive influence. The tones of the poems are very different, as shaped by the poet’s experiences with their parents, with Harwood creating an affirmative, loving description of her relationship with her mother while Plath develops a much darker and sinister view s.

“the mother” was written by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1945 who was born in topeka Kansas on June 7, 1917. “the mother” was published in her 1945 collection “A Street in Bronzeville”, in 1950 Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize.(bio) “the mother” is a great description of a mother going through a time of remembering her wrongs and pondering on what could have been. The poem “the mother” is a anti-abortion poem, it is a emotional outpour of the sense of guilt by a mother who has regrets, she speaks of mothers who have had abortions and how they will never forget. The title “the mother” is not capitalized so it makes it feel as if the writer is making the mother less important or not important at all.

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 Mother," by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a sorrowful, distressing poem about a mother who has experienced numerous abortions. While reading the poem, you can feel the pain, heartache, distress and grief she is feeling. She is both remorseful and regretful; nevertheless, she explains that she had no other alternative. It is a sentimental and heart wrenching poem where she talks about not being able to experience or do things with the children that she aborted -- things that people who have children often take for granted. Perhaps this poem is a reflection of what many women in society are feeling.

The poem “The Mother” written by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1945, is a poem that focuses on the immeasurable losses a woman experiences after having an abortion. The poems free verse style has a mournful tone that captures the vast emotions a mother goes through trying to cope with the choices she has made. The author writes each stanza of the poem using a different style, and point of view, with subtle metaphors to express the speaker’s deep struggle as she copes with her abortions. The poem begins with, “Abortions will not let you forget” (Brooks 1), the first line of the poem uses personification to capture your attention. The title of the poem has the reader’s mindset centered around motherhood, but the author’s expertise with the opening line, immediately shifts your view to the actual theme of the poem. In this first line the speaker is telling you directly, you will never forget having an abortion. Brooks utilizes the speaker of the poem, to convey that this mother is pleading for forgiveness from the children she chose not to have.