Notes From Labor of Love: Ellen Elder
All mothers take their role seriously, and it can creep into our writing. Sometimes, I wish my poems weren’t so serious. That I’m a single mom seems to take this seriousness to a new level.
In revisiting the three poems forthcoming in the Literary Mama anthology—“To Tell My Daughter When She’s Older,” “With My Daughter at the Pool,” and “From the Lockdown Sonnets: Late Winter”—I asked myself what commonalities appear. Since the format in each one is different, I looked at themes. I noticed two similarities: all three poems are about a mother and daughter (not surprising), and all three refer in some way to abuse of power or violence (this surprised me).
The first poem, “To Tell My Daughter When She’s Older” is a short poem in plain speak chronicling the day in 2016 when, after Hillary Clinton’s concession of defeat in the presidential election, a mother and her daughters went on a hike near their house and ran into the Clintons, doing the same. (The first line of the poem is “We almost had a female POTUS.”) The mother—carrying her baby in backpack carrier—hugs Clinton (this was pre-Covid). Bill took the photo, and the photo and story went viral. On the surface the poem is fairly positive: it uses words like “commiseration” and “respectful,” and there’s a dog. Any reference to abuse of power is left to the reader to uncover as they imagine what the speaker will one day tell her daughter both about the election and who ultimately assumed power.
The second poem “With My Daughter at the Pool” is a loose-limbed narrative poem—some short lines, some long. The speaker reads a collection of poetry while her daughter swims, then she relaxes in the sun while the daughter play-writes her own poem in a notebook. The speaker realizes that her own mother—who abandoned her as a toddler—missed the chance to see her learn to swim. Readers also learn that the collection of poetry is about a poet’s sister’s unsolved murder (the collection is Beth Bachmann’s Temper). Yet, the daughter doesn’t know either of these facts. In that sense, the poem is about protection, which is also mothering. And for fun, there’s a mermaid.
The third poem, “From the Lockdown Sonnets: Late Winter” is a loose (unrhymed) sonnet. The poem tries to capture a ‘typical’ day during the pandemic: mother and daughter go to the grocery where they observe a homeless man before them in line refunding bottles. They also observe tear-streaked faces on the streetcar. Despite the dreary setting, they stay busy; the daughter paints and the mom participates in a book club. But then the poem turns, as sonnets do. The final image is that of the speaker—home from the grocery—with a mask about her neck. As a poet, I had the choice to compare the mask to a necklace, but instead, I used “throttle.” Although subtle, this reference to violence is not just to the virus, but also to the many women during the pandemic left more vulnerable in their homes. In this poem, there is no dog or mermaid.
Why do my poems often refer to violence? On the surface, much in our lives appears beautiful and safe; but we cannot always assume people are safe, or that there’s not an underlying abuse of power at play. I believe that it’s my duty as a poet to bear witness to such.
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Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology was released on January 26th, 2024. Edited by Amanda Jaros, this collaboration with Small Harbor Publishing celebrates Literary Mama‘s twenty years of publishing the best writing for and by mothers. We asked the contributors, all Literary Mama staffers from across the years, to share thoughts about their writing process, their inspiration, or their work in the book. We’ll share those musings here on the Literary Mama blog.
Read Ellen’s poems by purchasing Labor of Love, now available on Amazon.