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Songs for the Unborn Second Baby
Songs for the Unborn Second Baby is a poetry collection by the American poet Alice Notley. She wrote this book when she was pregnant with her second son, Edmund Berrigan. She was living in Essex, England with her husband Ted Berrigan and her first son Anselm Berrigan. In Songs For The Unborn Second Baby, Notley celebrates her pregnancy and also describes how it limits her ability to fully invest herself in her creative life. Notley was the first New York School poet to write an entire book that focused on motherhood and addressed issues such as poetry's sexism and the stresses of balancing motherhood and creative life.

Initial Publication
This book was published by the United Artists in 1979. United Artists is one of the oldest independent publishing companies in the United States that focuses primarily on publishing books of poetry. It has also published books by other well-known New York School poets such as James Schuyler, Bernadette Mayer, and Ted Berrigan. The publication of this book was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Analysis
Notley is pregnant with her second son, Edmund Berrigan and is experiencing mixed feelings about her pregnancy and motherhood. One one hand, she celebrates her pregnancy and describes it as being generative to her poetry, but on the other hand, she feels restricted by it. She is apprehensive that the pressures of pregnancy and motherhood will inhibit her career as a poet. In an essay by Notley about motherhood, she says, "I felt at times desperate about my poetry. How could I become the poet now? Ted once suggested early in my first pregnancy that I might have to put off becoming the poet for a while." The publication of this book coincides with the Second-wave feminism, which lasted roughly from 1960 to the early 1980s and ended with the intra-feminism disputes of the feminist sex wars over issues such as sexuality and pornography. This book incorporates various themes that relate to this movement such as androgyny and sexism.

Hydrangeas I must obviously embrace you like diapers, snip off your old dead heads with the glorious, even, sidereal rose's pruners so I can be                  new appreciating renewed you daily male principal of the poetry, you earnestly sexed character of your poetry fucking me across the decades like we                     poets like or centuries why aren't you my obstetrician, are you? for they forgot us a midwife but you're right Bill Williams, I won't                     take it                     your flattery, I hate Venus you

This is an excerpt from Songs for the Unborn Second Baby in which Notley addresses the issue of poetry's sexism by asserting that all poetry is male. By being the first New York School poet to write an entire book about motherhood, she is breaking the notion that all poetry is male. She also mentions her obstetrician, William Carlos Williams, in this excerpt. In addition to being a poet, Williams was also a physician whose day job involved delivering babies. Although Williams' job involved delivering babies, he was very dismissive of women and of their bodies. Throughout this book, Notley describes how men view women as sexual objects that exist merely for their pleasure, and Williams' view of women epitomizes this typical "male gaze" that Notley refers to. In an essay called Doctor Williams' Heiresses, Notley describes that he "sets himself up to be the character of the American Male."

She incorporates flowers in various poems throughout this book. Flowers are typically used as a symbol for femininity, but in addition, Notley uses them as a symbol for fertility. The house she was living in when she wrote this book had a huge garden with rose bushes, and she mentions in her essay on motherhood that She says, "Hydrangeas I must obviously / embrace you like diapers." The hydrangeas represent her fertility, and she is referring to how society expects women to embrace their fertility and motherhood and discourages them from openly discussing the setbacks of motherhood. Notley was the one of the first women to honestly express the setbacks of pregnancy and motherhood without fear of societal rejection. She uses flowers to depict her positive and negative emotions throughout the book.

While Notley writes about feminine topics such as motherhood and pregnancy in this book, she explicitly states that she does not want her work to only be identified for her gender. In Songs For The Unborn Second Baby, Notley states, "I feel pretty androgynous / on paper/ otherwise its still just me here." The concept of androgyny is repeatedly touched on in this book and in other works by Notley. She incorporates phrases such as "more masculinely feminine" and "there's no formalized dailiness for the androgynous."

External References
Notley's PennSound Page with recordings from Songs For The Unborn Second Baby

Alice Notley's Wikipedia Page