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Poems about Motherhood by Sharon Olds and Bernadette Mayer

Poetry in America explores the diversity of American poetry. In each episode, members of various American communities join host Elisa New, following Gwendolyn Brooks to the South Side of Chicago, Alberto Ríos to the Sonoran Desert, Richard Blanco to Marco Island, and more. Joining along the way are singers and Supreme Court justices, playwrights and physicists, and teachers and their students.

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Poems about Motherhood by Sharon Olds and Bernadette Mayer

Poetry in America Episode 6 | 25m 38s | CC

Sharon Olds’s “The Language of the Brag” and Bernadette Mayer’s “The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters” are exuberant, boisterous tributes to motherhood. Both poets join host Elisa New, actor Donna Lynne Champlin, writer Emily Oster, activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, obstetrician Lorna Wilkerson, and co-founders of Our Bodies Ourselves to explore the miracle, and mess, of creating new life.

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Support for Poetry in America is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Dalio Family Fund, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Deborah Hayes Stone and Max Stone, Nancy Zimmerman and Walmart. Seasons 4 & 3 are distributed to PBS stations nationwide by PBS Plus, with Seasons 1 & 2 distributed nationally by American Public Television.