Mothersongs

About this book

A unique collection of verse about maternity and the celebration of motherhood, MotherSongs brings together for the first time a range of classic and contemporary poems from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada by some of our most memorable writers. The editors have included traditional ballads about maternity and courtly elegies for or by mothers as well as landmark nineteenth-century tributes to mothers and early twentieth-century meditations on motherhood. MotherSongs opens with poems about pregnancy, labor, delivery, and nursing and moves to poems about women raising children, delighting in their growth, or mourning their loss. The volume then turns to poems by sons and daughters who "remember mama." Mythic mothers and mother goddesses, moral or political reflections on maternity, and philosophical analyses of the meaning of motherhood are also represented. Taken together, the works collected here bear witness to the powerful ways in which motherhood has been transformed into art, and artistry has been shaped by maternity.