Poem-A-Day: With Child by Genevieve Taggard

December 8, 2013 With Child by Genevieve Taggard     Now I am slow and placid, fond of sun, Like a sleek beast, or a worn one: No slim and languid girl--not glad With the windy trip I once had, But velvet-footed, musing of my own, Torpid, mellow, stupid as a stone. You cleft me with your beauty's pulse, and now Your pulse has taken body. Care not how The old grace goes, how heavy I am grown, Big with this loneliness, how you alone Ponder our love. Touch my feet and feel How earth tingles, teeming at my heel! Earth's urge, not mine,--my little death, not hers; And the pure beauty yearns and stirs. It does not heed our ecstacies, it turns With secrets of its own, its own concerns, Toward a windy world of its own, toward stark And solitary places. In the dark Defiant even now; it tugs and moans To be untangled from these mother's bones.       Today's poem is in the public domain.  About This Poem  After Genevieve Taggard moved to New York City in 1920, she started her own journal, the Measure, with several other young writers. That same year she married poet Robert Wolf and gave birth to her only child, Marcia. Her poem "With Child," first appeared in the Liberator in 1921, and was later published in Taggard's first book of verse, For Eager Lovers (1922), and then in the anthology May Days (1926). Poetry by Taggard   Collected Poems 1918-1938 (Harper & Brothers, 1938)               Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.     Genevieve Taggard was born in Washington in 1894. When Taggard was two years old, her parents became missionaries and moved the family to Honolulu, Hawaii. As a young adult, Taggard moved to California and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became an active member in the literary community. Taggard worked for a publisher in New York City prior to receiving a teaching position at Mount Holyoke College. She later taught at Bennington College and Sarah Lawrence College. She died in 1948.   Related Poems Postpartum by Hiromi Itō Mother by Lola Ridge  To My Mother Waiting on 10/01/54 by Teresa Carson __________________________ Love reading Poem-A-Day? Help support it today.     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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