Poetry in Education

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"What is poetry good for?" A challenging academic environment must include science, math, and history in order to fully be complete in educating our society. Many wonder about the importance of poetry included with these other fields of study and if it is really necessary. Obviously math, science, etc. is crucial to understanding the facts and logics that explain our world around us. However, understanding all of these aspects without trying to understand the emotions and feelings that surround life around us seems to diminish why we strive to learn in the first place. Poetry achieves this level of understanding by allowing us to really experience life through the emotions and experiences of others.

In her poem, "The Mother," Gwendolyn Brooks examines the sorrow associated with abortion. The poem is a journey of rationalization for one woman who attempts to come to terms with her own guilt and the ghosts of her unborn children. Though it appears that she does not accomplish this, it is certain she is seeking to make peace with her children. If not for their sake, for her own.

The first line of the poem is the first sign that the poet is suffering from the guilt associated with abortions. Although Brooks is speaking in second person in this first section of the poem, it is clear that she is referring to herself. The weight of her guilt can be felt as she remembers "the damp small pulps with a little or with no hair." She even envisions them grown up as "singers" and "workers" that never had the opportunity to handle the air. She continues in this fashion, picturing in her mind soothing a child who is frightened by ghosts and by also contemplating leaving the child for whatever reason and returning back to them hungry, gobbling them with a mother's eye.

The second portion of the poem becomes more personal as Brooks shifts to first person, appearing to be more able to face the reality of what she has done. The poem also moves from what she has envisioned to what she has actually experienced. "I have heard . . . the voices of my dim killed children" is a gripping line that the poet cannot seem to escape. In the middle of the poem, Brooks begins to speak to her unborn children, which is another reason why the reader is lead to believe that Brooks is suffering from what she did to them.

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    Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "The mother" tells us about a mother who had many abortions. The speaker is addressing her children in explain to them why child could not have them. The internal conflict reveals that she regret killing her children or "small pups with a little or with no hair." The speaker tells what she will never do with her children that she killed. She will "never neglect", "beat", "silence", "buy with sweet", " scuffle off ghosts that come", "controlling your luscious sigh/ return for a snack", never hear them "giggled", "planned", and "cried." She also wishes she could see their "marriage", "aches", "stilted", play "games", and "deaths." She regrets even not giving them a "name" and "breaths." The mother knows that her decision will not let her forget by using the phrase "Abortions will not let you forget." The external conflict lets us know that she did not acted alone in her decision making. She mentions "believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate" and "whine that the crime was other than mine." The speaker is saying that her decision to have an abortion was not final yet but someone forced her into having it anyway. The external conflict is that she cannot forget the pain on the day of having the abortions. She mentions the "contracted" and "eased" that she felt having abortions.

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    This poem is about abortion and the narrator used the mother’s point of view to express her feeling of how she felt after she aborted her unborn child. The mother felt terrible and remorse about what she did. In this poem I think that the Brooks might had experienced of abortion herself so she wrote this poem to let the reader know how terrible it is to have a abortion. So this will reduce to process of having a abortion.

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