Telemechaus
...Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks gives a voice to a mother lamenting her aborted children through three stanzas in which a warning is given to mothers, an admission of guilt is made, and an apology to the dead is given. The poet-speaker, the mother, as part of her memory addresses the children that she "got that [she] did not get" (2). The shift in voice from stanza to stanza allows Brooks to capture the grief associated with an abortion by not condemning her actions, nor excusing them; she merely grieves for what might have been. The narrator's longing and regret over the children she will never have is highlighted by the change in tone throughout the poem.
A quick overview of "The Mother" indicates three stanzas, each of which has a different length than the other two and each stanza is of an alternate rhyme scheme. The first stanza is comprised of ten lines of five rhymed couplets. The audience is addressed in this stanza, listing all of the things a mother will never experience with the children she has aborted, "Abortions will not let you forget [
] You will never neglect or beat / Them, or silence or buy with a sweet" (1, 5-6). The rhyming in the first stanza is reminiscent of children's poems, which is appropriate considering the poem is directed toward the speaker's dead children. Although most of the poem rhymes, there are places where Brooks deviates from the poem's rhythm which is interrupted due to sudden statements, "Since anyhow you are dead. / Or rather, or instead, / You were never made" (24-26). This causes readers to pause and question why such statements are made. It shows the narrator's thought process; perhaps she does not think that abortion is a crime if the child was "never made." Brooks may want readers to consider whether or not they believe abortion is a crime, "A poem that both pro-life and pro-choice groups have championed at...
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