The Mother

Nearly all the images in “the mother” are hypothetical, or at least artistically augmented away from reality. The “will never” phrasing in the first stanza clarifies the interactions that follow as imagined or hypothetical. The mother couldn’t have literally stolen life and death from her children, nor could she have taken away such immaterial things as loves, giggles, names, and games. As far as literal representation goes, this poem is an inaccurate portrait of grief and loss. However, the speaker’s goal in “the mother” is not to accurately depict the process of abortion, but to cut to the emotional truth. By alluding to stealing, she tells the reader she feels like a thief, and by seizing luck, she tells the reader she feels like a curse (Line 15). The emotional weight of these slights is closer to the speaker’s true feelings than a clean, clinical description of a procedure would be. Although not literally true, this use of metaphor is more precise for the poet’s purposes.

By avoiding third person, “the mother” reads like a dramatic monologue. Since the whole poem is from the