Mothers

Mothers
CC: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177837

Giovanni creates the poem "Mothers" to highlight the appreciation she has for her mother and how one should never waste the precious moments one has with their mother. The tone created in this poem was very conversational, ease and very emotional. The importance of the word "Mother" is the person who brought one life into the world. A "Mother" is someone who also nurses their child, teach their child and also represents gentleness. Giovanni, to the reader, is the speaker because she describes her mother through imagery. The affect is imagery is highlighted to convey the setting and to understand the gentle atmosphere her mother creates. The reader also knows that Giovanni is the speaker because she includes her role as a mother to her son. Giovanni creates the imagery of the poem by setting the poem in her childhood and the role her mother played. She says, "that night i stumbled into the kitchen/ maybe because i've always been a night person or perhaps because i had wet the bed/ she was sitting on a chair, the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through those thousands of panes landlords who rented to people with children were prone to out in windows". This stanza discusses a flashbulb memory during her childhood. The importance was to highlight a moment of her mother during her childhood that created a warmth feeling about her mother. Giovanni then says, "she may have been smoking but maybe not her hair was three-quarters her height which made me a strong believer in the samson myth and very black." Samson was granted supernatural strength by God in order to combat his enemies and perform heroic feats. Samson loses his hair once his hair was cut. This discusses that hair is a motif of power and that since her mother has long hair, she believes that her hair is power. Giovanni uses personification when she says, "The moon sees me". She gives the moon human-like characteristics to represent the moon with sensory and perception like a human. This conveys that the moon looks and views her childhood or any other child to create an imagination. In the end, Giovanni speaks about the importance of life and emotions. She says, "to bear the pleasures as we have borne the pains". She is highlighting the fact that we must except the pleasures and pain of life.