Mother to Son

“Mother to Son” is a single stanza, free verse poem with no set meter, which creates a loose and conversational rhythm to the poem reflecting the conversation the speaker is having with her son. The varying line lengths, with a few particularly long lines and a few exceedingly short ones, emphasize the conversational tone. While there is no apparent rhyme scheme, a few subtle and slant rhymes like “stair” (Line 2) and “Bare” (Line 7), or “dark” (Line 12) and “hard” (Line 16) also reinforce the rhythm of the poem, giving it a lyrical quality. The distinctive rhythm, aided by a subtle rhyme scheme and varying line lengths, gives the poem a musical beat, reminiscent of Hughes’s development of jazz poetry a few years later. Even this early work hints at the influence of jazz and the artistic movements that were emerging from the Harlem Renaissance. The poem opens and closes with the same sentiment, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” on Lines 2 and 20. The single stanza embodies the single-mindedness of the speaker and her philosophy: There are no breaks on the stairs.