![]() " I’ve lost her, I thought, and called for the bill," the poem concludes. The impossibility of communication between parents and daughters, another common theme in poems about daughters, is beautifully conveyed in Rita Dove’s "The Bistro Styx," where a mother must restrain her disapproval of her daughter’s wayward lifestyle in Paris in exchange for a desired intimacy, which never comes. "We carried you in our arms on Independence Day, and now you’d throw us all aside and put us on our way," wrote Bob Dylan in "Tears of Rage." Likewise, Thomas Lux paints a wry, disappointing portrait of parenting in his poem, "A Little Tooth": ![]() Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:īut just as they inspire love and tenderness, so too do daughters cause pain and disappointment. William Butler Yeats’s "A Prayer for My Daughter" is a moving portrait of a father at sea thinking of his young daughter and imagining her future, while Richard Wilbur’s "The Writer" depicts a father deeply aware of his daughter’s pains, yet lovingly stepping back to allow her to express herself through the "commotion of typewriter keys": The desire to protect the daughter and anxiety over her future have also found their way into poems. Sylvia Plath, canonized as the ever-suffocating daughter thanks to such poems as "Daddy," also wrote of her experiences as a mother in such poems as "Morning Song" and "Balloons"-a gentle poem that captures the daughter’s lightness and cheer in the description of balloons floating around the house: The taste of apricots is in store for her. The particular joy in my heart she cannot imagine. "…recalling your waking, dear wife, to find a nipple rosier, we not yet thinking a child," writes James Applewhite in "Interstate Highway." Nan Cohen’s poem, "A Newborn Girl at Passover" speaks of the mother’s extreme joy at the birth of her daughter, and of the countless pleasures they will share together: More recently, poets have written of their awe of conception, birth, and parenthood. The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell,Įre they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starve He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,Īnd fire us hence like foxes. It is only later that he realizes his mistake and recognizes his love for Cordelia: In "King Lear," for example, a powerful but vain father mistakes his eldest daughter's flattery for love, and his youngest daughter’s honesty for betrayal thus he rewards Goneril and Regan with land and banishes the young Cordelia from his kingdom. The relationship between daughters and parents-particularly fathers-was a mainstay in Shakespeare’s work. She also expressed the extreme pain caused by separation from her daughter: ![]() ![]() More than gems in my comb box shaped by the God of the Sea, The eighth-century Japanese poet Otomo no Sakanoue Iratsume wrote of the all-encompassing nature of a mother’s love for her daughter: Thus poems about daughters range from adorations of the angelic child to laments about the indifferent, if not indignant, grown woman. ![]() Daughters have inspired many poets over the centuries, invoking not only feelings of love, protection, pride, and awe, but also anxiety, disappointment, anger, and loss. "A girl whose hair is yellower than torchlight should wear no headdress but fresh flowers," wrote the Greek poet Sappho in an ode to her daughter, Cleis. ![]()
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