Poetry

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses Anne Sexton's poem, "Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward", and how it highlights the imagery of the metaphor and the pathos of the "Unknown Girl." The paper notes that the pictures denote some anxiety between mother and child. The paper further notes that the word "lie" is also synonymous with falsehood and thus the reader has some trepidation about reading the rest of the poem.

From the Paper:

"In the next stanza that motherly feeling becomes stronger and she senses that the child knows she belongs with her, yet she also knows that they will not be together long. As the poem plays out we find that she is an unwed mother and in the fifties that often meant that you were to give up the child to an adoption service, so she states, 'you will not know me very long." The feel of the institution comes full force presented in the phrase, "The doctors are enamel," (Sexton 24) cold, white unfeeling porcelain that cannot be dented or harmed by outside circumstance."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dickenson, Emily. Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickenson. Linscott, Roberts Ed.(1959) New York: Doubleday.
• Sexton, Anne. The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1981).

More papers on Poetry:

• Creative Essay # 58512 : "Poetry in the 21st Century"
• Comparison Essay # 120057 : "The Apology for Poetry" and "Faerie Queene"
• Analytical Essay # 63131 : "Philosophy of Poetry"
• Essay # 33686 : "The Poetry of Longfellow"

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