Mothers

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177837
Nikki Giovanni’s poem entitled Mothers embodies the reader with a tone of gratitude for the speakers surrounding comfort. The speaker in the poem is Nikki Giovanni as she explains her awkward affection for her mother who is her audience.  The format of the poem is written with no capital letters insisting that there are no emphases on the way that she feels. This could mean that this is a soft poem from the heart. She begins the poem with stating “the last time I was home to see my mother we kissed” and that “unpleasantries pulled a warm comforting silence around [them] and [they] read separate books”. This implies that being that things were left unsaid between her and her mother, it caused an awkwardness that put them in different places in their lives. The biblical allusion that the speaker makes is to Samson. Samson came at a time when the Israelites were accused of disobedience to God. They soon became oppressed by the Philistines. God gives them Samson to deliver them and God's advices Samson to never cut his hair. His strength came from God, and he lost it when he was disobedient to God. In the end Samson realized that the strength was not in the hair but it was in the obedience that he was to give to God. In the fourth stanza the speaker writes “her hair was three-quarters her height which made me a strong believer in the Samson myth.” In this quote Giovanni gives it away that her mother was a strong follower of God and believed in being obedient. The speaker concludes the poem with saying that she taught this affection and obedience to her generation in which they will recite it along the line of reproduction. In my opinion the speaker is not writing about any historical or racial events, but about her childhood. She feels as though we must all learn to deal with happiness and affection to overcome the pains in which are innate to us.