The Muse Mother
It’s getting more obvious that Boland has some issues when it comes to motherhood. In this poem, she describes seeing a mother taking care of a child. Boland wants to “decline her…from this rainy street again to her roots” and have this mother essentially teach her how to be a mother herself, by…
I think you’re spot on when you point out Boland’s preoccupation with motherhood-and more generally woman-hood. Something worth pointing out in this poem, which always makes me smile, is the double-entendre of decline here. It’s a grammar term that connotes one’s familiarity with language and the orders and declensions of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. So teaching a tongue here, and the overall concern with teaching language is operating on several levels.
Notes
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damackinnon reblogged this from haileselassie42o and added:
I think you’re spot on when you point out Boland’s preoccupation with motherhood-and more generally woman-hood....
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haileselassie42o posted this
