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Poets Without Children

I have been thinking lately of poets - and other writers - without children. The world is such a fertile place, and April's cruel green shoots are coming. Yet, T.S. Eliot had no children - a fact I find less commented on than might be, since it immediately casts many of his poems about barren and fertile ground into new light. Blake had no children with his wife, either. I note, too that Jane Austen and Karen Blixen did not have children. Neither did Mahmoud Darwish. Or of course, Larkin. Or Emily Dickinson. Or Hart Crane. Among the busy world, many go by without offspring.
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puthwuth said…
'I have no daughter. I desire none.' (Weldon Kees)
Thu Mar 26, 11:18:00 pm 2009
Sheenagh Pugh said…
I guess in former days childless women were more likely to be able to build up a body of work. More time - Frau Bach didn't write much music, which wasn't surprising since she had 20-odd kids to look after - and less danger of an early death; look what happened to Charlotte Bronte.

It was a man (Cyril Connolly?) who said the pram in the hall was art's greatest enemy, and the poet George Mackay Brown once told me he thought every child a writer had was one book they wouldn't write. Presumably the logic is that the need to earn a living for the family gets in the way. OTOH, Charles Dickens seems to have found the pressure a stimulus if anything.
Sun Mar 29, 02:03:00 pm 2009
Anonymous said…
Dickens' wife, whom he divorced to be with his mistress, was the one who raised his 10 kids.

It’s not good to generalize, but great poets, unless they can delegate child raising to his/her spouse, probably shouldn’t have children. Poets live too much inside their own heads, having children means often having to choose between satisfying the urge to write (create) and satisfying a child’s need for attention.

Ironically one of the most beautiful and truthfully motherhood poem was “morning song” by Plath.
Mon Mar 30, 08:30:00 pm 2009
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