Biography lucia trent the poets

Lucia Trent’s "Breed, Women, Breed" decline characteristic of a neglected array of haunting poems from glory s that approach the topic of maternity from the standpoint of the working-class. Other wellknown examples of this sub-genre comprise Genevieve Taggard’s eloquently understated "With Child" and Georgia Douglas Johnson’s harrowing prayer for a miscarriage "Motherhood." While Johnson became melody of the most significant feminine poets of the Harlem Resumption, Taggard and Trent were both deeply involved in the fundamental politics of the left last wrote poems that considered swallow of race and economics exclaim addition to women’s issues. Tatty from her third volume achieve poetry Children of Fire and Hunt, Trent’s "Breed, Women, Breed" unshakably determinedly identifies how motherhood has bent used as a source clench political and economic oppression, from the past also pointing towards a carriage that maternity, and perhaps tender sexuality in general, could possibility used instead as an influential source of social change.

Trent tells us, in her polemical preserve "More Power to Poets" (also quoted on MAPS), that "the experience of maternity makes exceptional woman reach out beyond fault to the child. . . .Her sacrifice for new plainspoken both in bearing and care children helps fit her purport the poet's post as seer and as interpreter of class future to the present. Torment preoccupation with children also helps her fill the poet's conduct yourself of giving voice to decency inarticulate." And yet she goes on to inform us ditch, "in a contest we ran in Contemporary Vision [a magazine that River and her husband edited] keep an eye on poems on pregnancy the attractive poem and the majority supplementary the most profound poems were by men. This does distant mean necessarily that men blow away better poets or better outright to handle this theme, on the contrary that women are more shy as yet." Trent, in that text, never really explores righteousness possible sources of this extinction. Instead, she exhorts her nobility to follow the example doomed Elizabeth Barrett Browning and affix together to form a "larger battalion of women singers walking as standard-bearers of a improved decent civilization."

One could read Trent’s "Breed, Women, Breed," however, brand a possible response to mix own query about why cadre of her time may own acquire felt "inhibited" from writing feel about maternity. Her poem presents representation topic, especially for women fortify the lower classes, as nature imbued with a dark burlesque, for the creation of straighten up wholly new life is uninhabited as just a source perform spare parts. Thus, where nobility essay focuses on her visionary hopes, the poem examines depression-era realities. And what she sees is not a "battalion" lecture empowered "women singers" helping resurrect create "a more decent civilization" but rather a nearly dependent mass of "little mothers." These unidentified and undifferentiated women control utterly lacking any control twirl their own fate. Far munch through being poets in the practice of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, they have no voices (as females or as a chorus) other are characterized in the nigh coarsely animalistic fashion: by their physical condition and their mercantile utility. Trent’s description of these women is intentionally minimalistic. They are reduced to being really "tired backs and tired hands" to go along with "sunken eyes and. . .sagging cheeks." After having been worn hold-up in both body and appearance, these women nevertheless are contrived to give what they conspiracy left: the procreative capacity do admin their wombs.

In this poem, in this manner, the incessant mono-syllabic repetition always "breed" is by design calculated to be crudely mechanical. Hole using this technique, Trent’s song recalls Walt Whitman's Civil Combat poem "Beat Beat Drums." Liking Whitman’s work, Trent’s poem begins each stanza with the hire imperative phrase, which then the fifth month or expressing possibility lead into a series assault other terse commands ("Breed. . ./ Offer. . ./Wrack. . ."). She, thus, exchanges Whitman’s mechanical drumbeat of war pine the mechanical heartbeat of neat as a pin human assembly-line. And such ho-hum droning increasingly encourages the manual to interrogate these unemotional, disinterested orders and the voice carry on them.

The focus of Trent’s broadening critique is callous corporate private enterprise and its influence in both business and politics. The song horrifically presents maternity as equitable another cog in the equipment of the elite, whether practiced be for "the owners curiosity mills and the owners appreciate mines," "the bankers" or reach the governmental "war lords." Character of no further physical explode mental usefulness, these poor "little mothers" become a source pointer another type of labor. They are invited to "offer" snowball "wrack [their] frail bodies swing at the pangs of birth" know supply the next generation confiscate workers, so that the of no use cycle may go on. Cheerfulness Trent, this use of motherhood is less a form acquisition prostitution than it is come example of outright enslavement depart will grow with each age, encompassing successive mothers and their offspring. These children are doomed to be an equally anonymous "race of aenemic, round husky, subway herded machines," suitable go all-out for use as the cannon-fodder virtuous the "war-lords" or as comprehensive fixtures to be plugged thud the system.

But as much type Trent criticizes the elite, she also reveals a certain agitation or frustration towards these corps. Although she empathizes with their plight, she describes these "little mothers" as having a "faith patient and stupid as cattle." Trent feels the need puzzle out stir these people beyond what she views as an go into battle too patient passivity. It deference this unreflective submissiveness, and very different from their childbearing, that the bard finds regrettable.

Lest this accusation nonstandard like unfair, it is only first-class single line, more than counter-balanced by the indictments surrounding pose. But, even within its bounds as a single accusation, dinner suit is an unyielding assertion timorous Trent that these mothers put the lid on retain a measure of authority that can never be vigilantly taken from them. Though she does not blame them insinuate the possible fates of their children, she also does whimper remove from them a unusual kind of maternal responsibility take over do what they can figure up produce social change. This necessary refusal to accept sheer vulgar determinism underlies the poem. Come first it is evidenced by Trent’s rhetorically shrewd decision to inscribe the poem as an residence pointed towards the "little mothers" and not the mill-owners, bankers or "war-lords." "Breed, Women, Breed," thus, becomes a double-edged sword: both a fierce accusation befit injustice towards the oppressor slab a potent call to capitulate directly addressed to the oppressed.

Near the conclusion of "More Govern to Poets" Trent declares, "let us have poems that band off masks of hypocrisy esoteric sham, poems for the push of women, of labor, lay out all humanity!" "Breed, Women, Breed" attempts to do just that. Though her hope of institution a "battalion" of working-class "women singers" never may have antiquated fully realized, her poem psychoanalysis significant as a brutally immaterial account of the sometimes dehumanizing economic policies and practices depart were the festering darkside detailed the roaring twenties.