Author: Francesca Segal
Cites
- Edith Wharton (1)
- IN: The Innocents (2012) Fiction, Domestic Fiction, British
EPIGRAPH: In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more than once.
FROM: The Age of Innocence, (1920), Novel, US
- Anne Stevenson (1)
- IN: The Awkward Age (2017) Fiction, American
EPIGRAPH: Why does a mother need a daughter?
Heart's needle, hostage to fortune,
freedom's end. Yet nothing's more perfect
than that bleating, razor-shaped cry
that delivers a mother to her baby.
The bloodcord snaps that held
their sphere together. The child,
tiny and alone, creates the mother.
A woman's life is her own
until it is taken away
by a first, particular cry.
Then she is not alone
but a part of the premises
of everything there is:
a time, a tribe, a war.
FROM: "Poem for a Daughter", (1982), Poem, US/England