Showing 161 - 167 of 167 annotations tagged with the keyword "Pregnancy"

The Stone Diaries

Shields, Carol

Last Updated: Jan-30-1997
Annotated by:
Marta, Jan

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction — Secondary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

The Stone Diaries recount the life of Daisy Goodwill (1905-199? [sic]). "[W]ife, mother, citizen of our century," her son closes the benediction of her memorial service. Yet Daisy is also the orphaned daughter of an orphan--her dramatic birth a turning point for her father, the neighbours--and a social outcast. Daisy becomes a happy child, a lifelong friend, a college graduate, a consummate gardener, a cultivator of stories, a pragmatist, a romantic, a widow twice (once scandalously, once more ordinarily) . . . . In short, the diaries of "Day's Eye" bear witness to the extraordinary lives of seemingly ordinary "citizens."

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Sonogram

Kirchwey, Karl

Last Updated: Jan-29-1997
Annotated by:
Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Like Paul Muldoon's Sonogram (see this bibliography), this poem was occasioned by the poet's wife's ultrasound of their first child, Tobias. (See pgs. 258-259 of the anthology for a description of the poet and his comments on this poem.) "Sonogram" is alternately lyrical and bright ("through succulences of conducting gel") and dark (" . . . or sinuses of thought / like Siracusa's limestone quarries, where / an army of seven thousand starved to death.") The language is highly poetic (and successfully so) in conjoining the worlds of medical technology and poetry ("or alveolus in a narthex rose") and playful ("God's image lies couched safe in blood and matter" punning on "vouchsafed").

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Dreams of a Doctor's Wife

Massad, Stewart

Last Updated: Jan-28-1997
Annotated by:
Moore, Pamela
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The story is told from the perspective of an obstetrician's wife. She encourages her husband as he finishes school and gets his first job. Then she becomes pregnant. She tells of the changes in her body and in her perspective. Her husband is busy treating other women, while she goes to childbirth classes alone. He arrives just at the end of the birth. She wants him to be with her more often, but understands his need to be with his patients.

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The Birth

Muldoon, Paul

Last Updated: Oct-17-1996
Annotated by:
Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The Birth, appropriately, is the last of the three birth-cycle poems in The Annals of Chile, Muldoon's latest collection. The three together (all annotated in this database--see Sonogram and Footling) celebrate three aspects of the gestation and delivery of the poet's new daughter.

Beginning with the poet's donning a scrub suit ("lime-green scrubs"), the poem quickly explodes into a festive pyrotechnics that reminds one of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Joyce: ". . . the windlass-women ply their shears / and gralloch-grub / for a footling foot, then, warming to their task, / haul into the inestimable / realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons / and eel-spears. . . . "

It takes courage and skill to carry off such a verbal tour de force but Muldoon aptly does so, charging the poem with the newness, sheer power of wonder, and joy of loving a thing for itself that his daughter's birth means to him. This is a joyous poem that can almost visibly demonstrate to students how poetry gets its job done. It may even make more than a few try their hand.

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Footling

Muldoon, Paul

Last Updated: Oct-17-1996
Annotated by:
Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Paul Muldoon is one of Ireland's most prominent poets. He is a poet's poet, celebrating language, Irish culture and Ireland in almost every word. In "Footling", "Sonogram" (the preceding poem), and "The Birth" --all from his latest collection, The Annals of Chile--Muldoon is apparently chronicling the recent growth of his family in a poetic triptych of power and inventiveness. "Footling" describes the seeming reluctance of the poet's daughter to venture forth and breach the "great sea-wall" in order to "take a header" into the great "ground swell (italicized) of life." See this database for annotations of Sonogram and The Birth.

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Mother and Child

Axelrod, David

Last Updated: Jun-26-1995
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

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."

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Sonogram

Muldoon, Paul

Last Updated: May-11-1995
Annotated by:
Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This is the first of three poems (all annotated in this database) chronicling events that culminate in the arrival of the poet's new daughter. The second, Footling, relates her in utero reluctance to sally forth; the last, The Birth, is a verbal Fourth of July celebrating the birth of Dorothy Aoife Korelitz Muldoon. "Sonogram" is a three-stanza, eight-line image of the sonogram and the images it suggests. It reminds one of Pound's famous Metro poem for its sheer economy and pictorial power.

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