Point of View

Most of the poems in Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth are written in either the first or second person point of view. "What Your Mother Told You After Your Father Left," "Your Mother's First Kiss," "Grandfather's Hands," "The Kitchen," "Fire," "When We Last Saw Your Father," "You Were Conceived," "Old Spice," "Questions for Miriam," and "Ugly" are all written in the second person. This means that they draw the reader into the poem, making them a character referred to as "you." This creates a heightened sense of involvement for the reader, and also forces them to figure out who they are in the poem specifically. In "Fire" the "you" is the husband who hit his wife, while in "Your Mother's First Kiss" the "you" is a child who resembles her father.

In many of these poems, the "you" is only a small part...