News at Eleven (Back Page): Though I'm sure it's a simplification,

I've been struck by how often, for male poets, having children roots itself in linear imagery, bloodlines, inheritance; whereas for female poets, the process is a form of replacement, of disappearing. Sylvia Plath's "Morning Song" begins (brilliantly):

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements . . .
and continues
I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

Here, maternity is self-sacrifice, likened to rain falling, forming a pool which then shows the rain-cloud's own dispersal.

from The Guardian: Poems for a baby

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