An obstacle to glorifying motherhood is that some feminists have decried this notion as “the sinister invention of patriarchy.” Indeed, in the third part of the poem,“What Actually,” the very suggestion to 1970s’ Parisian academics that the “goddess image” might be “re-emergent… in women’s art” was criticized as fascist. Yet if motherhood is not a useful concept, what might describe that need for connection, body to body, that healing symbiosis of a mother with her child, which would lead a mother whose son was dying of cancer to pine for this connection, to wish to “take pictures of him in a teeshirt and shorts, as naked as she dares”?

An obstacle to glorifying motherhood is that some feminists have decried this notion as ‘the sinister invention of patriarchy.’

Refusing to enter into motherhood, protecting oneself from the risk of being “put to use” by children, has its dire consequences: “(…) we get like wornout houses, but only / the life that hoards and coffins itself is already dead” (“3. What Actually,” from “Propaganda Poem: Maybe for Some Young Mamas,” p. 49).

In “The Leaf Pile” (pp. 50-51), the mother has hit her son’s cheek as punishment, “like a woman slapping a carpet / with all my strength.” She notes that he “will not remember he remembers it,” seemingly a hope that this is the case, that “[t]he mind is a leaf pile where you can bury / anything, pain,” even cover up the “screaming woman,” the violent witch in her imagination, “that is sticking in [her] mind,” who “wears a necklace of skulls.” The skulls might indicate other moments of violence; while the boy has a mark on his cheek, he “is not crying,” apparently unshocked by this form of relating.

In motherhood, thoughts are interrupted; work suffers. Yeats, we are told, articulated the dilemma: “[p]erfection of the life or of the art.” In “The Seven Samurai, the Dolly, and Mary Cassatt” (p. 52), the poet derides “the merry childlessness of [Mary Cassat’s] art”; she has Paris in her life and “white gloves.” Those who choose both life and art — children and writing — are destined to imperfection, though when younger the poet decidedly “wanted both!” The creative impulses must remain under-expressed, or unexpressed, their death imminent, like the roots of great trees at the end of winter which must wait still longer before their revival, their “change”: “the great melting.” In “The Change” (pp. 53-54), these trees

Will the change happen before we are “too old”? Or can we escape our condition? In “One, to Fly” (p. 55), the boy, now nine, dreams of fleeing from humiliating circumstances in which he is being bullied. He wishes he could fly, reading a book “twice / because kids fly in it.” In contrast, his older teenage sister, in “In the Dust” (pp. 56-57), seems to have mastered her world. She has discovered “perfection” in her dancing and her “body, her readiness” seems to beckon to the cosmos as she lies down on her towel near the pool. The author is moved by her daughter’s physicality, wishing to “run / my hands over her nude body,” over the perfect young being sprung from her womb, now ready for creating life herself. Her nubility seems to create “whirling in the dust” — an invisible, ubiquitous, and supernatural “powerful movement.” She is ready; the poet is letting her go “willingly.” In “His Speed and Strength” (p. 58), the writer’s son is active again and more confident now, taking risks: racing her home on his bicycle, doing “flips” on the diving board. She is encouraging and enjoying his virility as she races him, “buzzing” up the street and “flashing around the corner.” She is able to celebrate the energy of her children — this same energy that has demanded her attention and distracted her from her work, that has worn her out, that has led her to want to “kill” them.

In “This Power” (p. 64), the poet realizes that it was the power of giving life and assuring the growth of her child that fulfilled her own mother as the caretaker of her “rooted garden.” It was her relationship with her daughter, the “weeping and hugging,” that provided “the sun.” Despite the demands of motherhood, her mother maintained her own emotional and intellectual life apart from her children, with her “folders of secret poems.” Her “boyish energy” seems to have kept her alive: characteristics, it seems, she shares with her daughter. The final poem, “The Dream” (p. 65), is a celebration of being “in labor… giving birth.” The dream, the labor, lasts “for days,” recalling the lost opportunity of non-anaesthetized labor during the birth of her son, of her desire to live the full range of emotions that motherhood provides.