The Damsel’s Files

Poetry is the paradox of literature, because it is easy and hard all at the same time. Writing a poem doesn’t mean that you only have to break sentences into two in order to create lines and stanzas. It is more than that. It takes a little bit of courage and a lot of experiences. Poetry is like an investment, but instead of rolling some money out — you are rolling your emotions in order to express and get heard.

The challenge is to fit a whole lot of experience in the smallest amount of words possible. This experience can be about anything, such as loss of a loved one, first heartbreak, childhood to adolescence transition, and parenthood. There are just too many good and bad experiences that you can turn into poetry and inspire a lot of people.

Parenthood, for example, is an experience that is scary and ecstatic at the same time. It ignites a lot of fear, especially to first-time parents. So when you think that things are going the wrong way, you can turn to poetry and express it all out. Thus, here are some of the best poems about parenthood and everything in between that you should checkout.

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

The remarkable Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes wrote the poem Mother and Son in 1922. It was published in Crisis, a magazine, of that year and was also included in the poet’s first anthology of poems 4 years later.

Mother to Son

By Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

• Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son” from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Copyright © 2002 by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.
• Source: Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47559/mother-to-son)

Parents Poem by Jacqueline Woodson

The promising poem titled Parents Poem by Jacqueline Woodson is one of the many poems that were included in her anthology Locomotion.

Parents Poem

BY Jacqueline Woodson

When people ask how, I say

a fire took them.

And then they look at me like

I’m the most pitiful thing in the world.

So sometimes I just shrug and say

They just died, that’s all.

A fire took their bodies.

That’s all.

I can still feel their voices and hugs and laughing.

Sometimes.

Sometimes I can hear my daddy

calling my name.

Lonnie sometimes.

And sometimes Locomotion

come on over here a minute.

I want to show you something.

And then I see his big hands

holding something out to me.

It used to be the four of us.

At night we went to sleep.

In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast.

Daddy worked for Con Edison.

You ever saw him?

Climbing out of a manhole?

Yellow tape keeping the cars from coming

down the block.

An orange sign that said Men Working.

I still got his hat. It’s light blue

with CON EDISON in white letters.

Mama was a receptionist.

When you called the office where she worked,

she answered the phone like this

Graftman Paper Products, how may I help you?

It was her work voice.

And when you said something like

Ma, it’s me.

her voice went back to normal. To our mama’s voice

Hey Sugar. You behaving? Is the door locked?

That stupid fire couldn’t take all of them.

Nothing could do that.

Nothing.

• Jacqueline Woodson, “Parents Poem” from Locomotion. Copyright © 2003 by Jacqueline Woodson. Used by permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
• Source: Poetry Foundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58427/parents-poem)

B by Sarah Kay

Sarah Kay is among the most promising poets of today. She is also a brilliant slam poet who has travelled the world competing for slam poetry competitions and performing spoken poetry. B is one of her wonderful poems made into book, which she also performed in Ted Talk.

B

By: Sarah Kay

If I should have a daughter,

instead of Mom, she’s gonna call me Point B.

Because that way she knows that no matter what happens,

at least she can always find her way to me.

And I’m going to paint the solar systems

on the backs of her hands, so she has to learn the entire universe

before she can say, “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”

And she’s going to learn that this life will hit you

hard,

in the face;

wait for you to get back up

just so it can kick you in the stomach,

but getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way

to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

There is hurt,

here,

that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry. So

the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn’t coming,

I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself.

Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers,

your hands will always be too small

to catch all the pain you want to heal.

Believe me, I’ve tried.

“And, baby,” I’ll tell her,

don’t keep your nose up in the air like that.

I know that trick;

I’ve done it a million times.

You’re just smelling for smoke

so you can follow the trail

back to a burning house,

so you can find the boy

who lost everything in the fire

to see if you can save him.

Or else—

find the boy

who lit the fire

in the first place,

to see if you can change him.

But I know she will anyway, so instead

I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby,

because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix.

Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can’t fix.

But that’s what the rain boots are for,

because rain will wash away everything,

if you let it.

I want her to look at the world

through the underside of a glass-bottom boat,

to look through a microscope

at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind,

because that’s the way my mom taught me.

• Kay, Sarah. B — Illustrated Edition. Hachette Books, 2015.

Each Time I Cried by Trinidad Rodriguez

Each Time I Cried is one of the amazing poems that is included in Trinidad Rodriguez’ poetry book called Trini: My Life of Poems. The anthology was published in 2015 containing multiple poems that center on perseverance, bravery, and faith of a strong single mother.

Each Time I Cried

By Trinidad Rodriguez

Each time I cried and just went on—

Car broke down; what can I do?

Its three o’clock, my child’s not in.

But still not over and things get done,

The house is locked – the kids are in –

I look around at how it’s been.

No simple mother – no simple task.

I just tried doing what was best.

The job was meant to be shared by two,

It’s hard to be mother, and father too.

• Rodriguez, Trindad. Trini: My Life of Poems. iUniverse, 2015.