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Begun after the birth of her son during the Vietnam War and a few days following the shooting of four students at Kent State, Alicia Suskin Ostriker's fourth book of poetry is a moving and profound experience of birth and motherhood--juxtaposed against the violence of war. A feminist's affirmation of motherhood, The Mother/Child Papers confronts ambivalence, love, guilt, fear and pride and is a book whose politics are a passionate plea for peace. |
| It is startling to read the early pages of this book: where, before
this, was the literature of squalid bliss and righteous woe of taking care
of an infant? It is alive in Ostriker....one of the most intelligent and
lyrical of American poets.
--Valerie Trueblood, Iowa Review
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| Ostriker's work details the achievement of a connection between personal
history and public fact as both present themselves to a very intelligent
writer....Nothing in the novels of Margaret Drabble is as afecting, as
convincing, as a few lines of Ostriker's.
--Mary
Kinzie, American Poetry Review
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| Ostriker's project is to recover the truth of mothering, both the joy
which has been denied and the murderous rage....She asks, "Why are mothers
always repreented sentimentally, as having some sort of altruistically
self-sacrificing maternal feelings, as if they did not enjoy themselves...another
love that dares not tell its name?" So she asserts the sexual pleasure
of breast-feeding: the perfect union of mother/child...."Writing like a
woman" also means freely acknowledging "unmotherly emotions," the darker
side of mothering.
--Kathe
Davis, Sojourner
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| (On the second edition:) I welcome this reissuing of The Mother/Child
Papers, for they are documents as well as poems, an essential part of our
history. 'To grow means pain,' as the poet has said. For this pain let
us be grateful.
--Maxine
Kumin
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Table
of Contents
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To Order email:
ostriker@rci.rutgers.edu
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Poem excerpt:
pp
3-6
His
Speed and Strength