Mother Songs: Poems for, by and about Mothers Book

The editors have included traditional ballads about maternity and courtly elegies for or by mothers as well as landmark nineteenth-century tributes to mothers and early twentieth-century meditations on motherhood.

MotherSongs opens with poems about pregnancy, labor, delivery, and nursing and moves to poems about women raising children, delighting in their growth, or mourning their loss. The volume then turns to poems by sons and daughters who "remember mama."

Mythic mothers and mother goddesses, moral or political reflections on maternity, and philosophical analyses of the meaning of motherhood are also represented. Taken together, the works collected here bear witness to the powerful ways in which motherhood has been transformed into art and artistry has been shaped by maternity.

MotherSongs, a unique collection of verse about maternity and the celebration of motherhood, opens with poems about pregnancy, labor, delivery, and nursing and moves to poems about women raising children, delighting in their growth or mourning their loss. Includes works by such artists as Emily Dickinson, William Blake, Walt Whitman and others.