Why I love Gwendolyn Brooks' "the mother"

            I recently revisited a poem that I come back to every so often. It is “the mother”, by Gwendolyn Brooks, and it was published in 1945. The first two lines, “Abortions will not let you forget / You remember the children you got that you did not get", capture the reader completely. The phrase “you got that you did not get” is powerful and poignant.

Couplets open and close the poem, but the use of caesuras and enjambment in lines ten through nineteen add a great deal of depth. The work feels like it is pulling, pushing, tugging, and, at times, pleading with the reader not to follow it to the end. It is as if the mother wants to share her story of woe, but is alternately, and understandably, reluctant. We see this in lines eleven and twelve when Brooks writes, “I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed / children.” The line break preceding children is jarring, but it also draws the reader in. We know what’s been “killed”, but the use of the word “children” is unexpected. Placing the word children by itself in line twelve also gives the impression that the speaker must catch her breath before completing the thought. For the speaker it isn’t just a fetus, it is a dead child, a child that never existed while existing eternally in “the wind."

Brooks’ description transcends the political debate between pro-life and pro-choice camps, and instead speaks to the pain and suffering that abortions can cause. It fully renders the pain of a society that gives people the feeling that the act itself is necessary. Brooks works in concrete terms when representing the interaction between a mother and a child, while seamlessly drawing the reader’s attention to abstract ideas of loss, suffering, and pain in a tragically beautiful way.

Gwendolyn Brooks is an amazing poet, and I’d have to say “the mother” can be held up to any poem of the 20^th century. Its theme is straightforward, which is at times a tougher task than ambiguity, and is certainly part of its beauty. This is why I love “the mother."