Mother and Child

Axelrod, David

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack
  • Date of entry: Jun-26-1995

Summary

A man speaks to his six-months pregnant wife. He says she lures him "to our conjugal bed / to use each other gently . . . . " He imagines "eyes staring at me from / deep inside" that "say we are captured . . . . " He concludes "We are / too sure we need each other / to let go."

Commentary

In this simple love poem, the unborn child appears as the person to whom the poet and his wife have to "pay ransom for twenty years . . . . " The poet is pleased by his captured state, however, even though the "luring" to bed in the first stanza suggests that the wife is actually an accomplice of the captor.

Miscellaneous

First published: 1974, in Myths, Dreams, and Dances (Despa Press).

Primary Source

Articulations: The Body and Illness in Poetry

Publisher

Univ. of Iowa Press

Place Published

Iowa City, Iowa

Edition

1994

Editor

Jon Mukand