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Maternity | Introduction

“Maternity” by Anna Swir has appeared in two of the English translations of her works: Talking to My Body and Happy as a Dog’s Tail. The title of the poem is appropriate to its content since the poem is about a woman facing her newborn child for the first time and trying to come to terms with this new situation. While the publication date of the poem is not mentioned in the English translations, it is known that Anna Swir had a daughter who is the likely subject of the poem. This daughter would have been born sometime in the 1930s or 1940s, but the poem was probably written a long time afterward. Its first appearance was in the 1970 Polish publication of a collection called Wind. Happy as a Dog’s Tail was published in Poland in 1978 and published in the United States in 1985. Talking to My Body was published in the United States in 1996.

In the first publication of “Maternity,” the poem had two additional stanzas that were removed for Talking to My Body. These two stanzas seem only to repeat the already established message and do little to add to the poem. Furthermore, the additional two stanzas spell out a conclusion rather than allowing the readers to figure it out on their own. Consequently, the shortened version seems to have a more dramatic ending and more impact on the reader’s imagination. Perhaps for these reasons, the two stanzas were dropped in the second English collection of Swir’s poems. “Maternity” fits into Swir’s central theme in these two collections, which is referencing the body, but it also inludes themes of motherhood, love, and independence.

Maternity Summary

The Event
The first four lines of “Maternity” deal with the obvious topic of life. However, Swir looks at birth in terms of both a new life, the baby, and a sacrificed life, that of the mother. Using the first person, Swir says “I gave birth to life,” not “I gave birth to a baby” or “a child” or anything yet connected to her as a human. Rather, Swir is focused on the product of birth as a living creature that not only has a birth, but also will have a death and a life in between. This perspective is extended in the second sentence (lines 2–4) with the use of what appears to be an odd word choice: “entrails.” When discussing birth, one usually uses terms such as “womb” or “uterus” or even “belly.” Entrails has the meaning of guts or intestines. Unless Swir’s biology is faulty, she chose “entrails” to associate the product of her body with other eliminations to emphasize that what came out this time was something living. This unique turn of events demands something from her life in turn. Swir likens the demands of motherhood to the human sacrifice once made to the gods by the Aztecs, perhaps because the commitment is so total and all-consuming.

The Confrontation
In the next three lines, Swir starts to focus in on the baby, whom she calls “a little puppet.” This mother seems still not to be sure of what she has gotten herself into. What is this little creature she has been given? It is too hard to believe that it is a real living human, so is it a toy? But... » Complete Maternity Summary