The Midwife Dream by Alicia Ostriker – Analysis and Commentary

THE MIDWIFE DREAM BY ALICE OSTRIKER – ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY

The poem well illustrates insight executed with brevity. Images and symbols are startlingly juxtaposed.

THE MIDWIFE DREAM by Alicia Ostriker

One of my students invited me to be her midwife

it seemed an easy birth, the girl healthy and strong

I reached in, drew out the head

pulled gently

but the scalp was smooth and cleft

strange I thought but it will be ok

only as I pulled and it emerged

it actually was a penis

brown and veined

pushing through the girl’s stretched labia

strange the dream arrived

so late so far along

in my life

The narrative begins innocuously enough but then swiftly segues into the surreal. It describes a chain of fantastical events so that, appropriately, the vignette unfolds in the setting of a dream.

It is a visually disturbing account because of the sexually explicit imagery—male and female genitalia coincide in the act of giving birth, a juxtaposition denoting that they somehow coincide.

Human genitalia being symbolic motifs, the phallus especially, a symbolic interpretation is apropos here. The lurid apparition points to a growing convergence over time (“the dream arrived / so late so far along / in my life”) of female with male power, although more than one interpretation is possible. After all, the poem is pregnant with meaning. Please excuse the wordplay.

“pregnant with meaning”