Cradle and all : women writers on pregnancy and birth / edited by Laura Chester.

Boston : Faber and Faber, 1989.

ix, 265 pages ; 21 cm

New beginnings. The baby laughs ; Meanwhile, back on Earth / Sherril Jaffe -- Spring tide / Summer Brenner -- The moment ; The planned child ; Eggs / Sharon Olds -- from Rough strife / Lynne Sharon Schwartz -- Onset / Fanny Howe -- The fetus / Maxine Chernoff -- Who knows / Laura Chester -- from Son sonnets / Arlene Stone -- Propaganda poem : maybe for some young mamas / Alicia Ostriker -- Bluegill / Jayne Anne Phillips.

Full flower. from The snow was burning / Elizabeth Hay -- from Breathing lessons / Anne Tyler -- Blissed raga / Summer Brenner -- The violation / Isabel Huggan -- Suckle sex / Laura Chester -- Armed robbery ; Heroines / Miriam Sagan -- Madonna of the peaches / Joan Slesinger Logghe -- from The country girls trilogy / Edna O'Brien -- from A birth account / Gladys Hindmarch -- from Songs for the unborn second baby / Alice Notley -- from The desires of mothers to please others in letters / Bernadette Mayer -- Enceinte / Anne Waldman -- Giving birth / Wanda Coleman -- Baby moves inside / Barbara Rosenthal -- The birth of the water baby / Erica Jong.

On being born. Song of being born / Laura Chester -- Giving birth / Margaret Atwood -- North / Lyn lifshin -- A birth / Maxine Chernoff -- Rings, iv. / Daphne Marlatt -- from Skin : shadows/silence / Deena Metzger -- from South America mi hija / Sharon Doubiago -- Whithertofore / Summer Brenner -- from Don't have a baby till you read this / Nikki Giovanni -- from Nativity / Diane di Prima -- from Natural birth / Toi Derricotte -- from Another marvelous thing / Laurie Colwin -- from Journal intime / Nicole Brossard -- from Fortune's daughter / Alice Hoffman -- On the first night / Erica Jong -- from The stone baby / Laura Chester -- from The desires of mothers to please others in letters / Bernadette Mayer -- The language of the brag / Sharon Olds.

The painful parts. Sisters / Christine Schutt -- Elegy, the fertility specialist / Sharon Thesen -- Strange fruit / Gloria Frym -- Birth / Anaïs Nin -- Undertow / Rachel Blau DuPlessis -- Camouflage / Marianne Gingher -- The daughter I don't have / Lyn Lifshin -- A touch of the flu / Joyce Carol Oates -- from Winter's child / Dea Trier Mørch -- from Acts of love : an American novel / Carol Bergé -- Inches and lives ; Letter to an unborn daughter / Summer Brenner -- from The stone baby / Laura Chester.

Milk songs. New mother / Sharon Olds -- The rattle of wheels toward the rooms of the new mothers / Naomi Shihab Nye -- Up and down / Rachel Hadas -- Milk / Marie Harris -- Sonne / Anne Waldman -- Dreams of a new mother / Joyce Thompson -- from Primagravida / Laura Chester -- from Rings, v. / Daphne Marlatt -- from Milk song / Frances Jaffer -- from The mother knot / Jane Lazarre -- Letter to M. ; The Cambridge afternoon was grey / Alicia Ostriker -- Cry baby / Carole Itter -- For my sons who had mouths like rosebuds / Madeline Tiger -- Empty breasts / Joan Slesinger Logghe.

Further mothering. Two and one / Rachel Hadas -- from What you learn / Lydia David -- Knowing you / Rae Armantrout -- How lies grow / Maxine Chernoff -- The loba sings to her cub / Diane di Prima -- The miracle of tenses / Barbara Einzig -- from Mother/child / Alicia Ostriker -- To baby ; Baby's pantoum / Anne Waldman -- from Tabula rosa / Rachel Blau DuPlessis -- from Yonnondio / Tillie Olsen -- Them two little girls / Bobbie Louise Hawkins -- Eve of Easter / Bernadette Mayer -- Third snowfall / Marilyn Hacker -- from Of woman born / Adrienne Rich -- Pajamas ; 35/10 / Sharon Olds -- from House of the Lord, the Earth / Besmilr Brigham -- Swing low ; Something larger / Sherril Jaffe.