“Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-haired child.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Carl Sandburg 62
American writer and editor 1878–1967

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“What a man sacrifices in struggling for his Volk, a woman sacrifices in struggling to preserve this Volk in individual cases. What a man gives in heroic courage on the battlefield, woman gives in eternally patient devotion, in eternally patient suffering and endurance. Every child to which she gives birth is a battle which she wages in her Volk’s fateful question of to be or not to be.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech from the Sixth Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg (September 8th, 1934), quoted in Hitler: speeches and proclamations, 1932-1945 - Volume 2 - Page 533 https://books.google.com/books?id=a9dVAAAAYAAJ&q=What+a+man+sacrifices+in+struggling+for+his+Volk,+a+woman+sacrifices+in+struggling+to+preserve+this+Volk+in+individual+cases&dq=What+a+man+sacrifices+in+struggling+for+his+Volk,+a+woman+sacrifices+in+struggling+to+preserve+this+Volk+in+individual+cases&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8id_w8-TWAhXIRSYKHSn5CV0Q6AEILDAB
1930s

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“A married man has only one duty towards his wife in order to make her happy, and that is to ensure that she is constantly pregnant, and with a child in her arms.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.16 <!-- p. 49 -->
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationship with those he loves, with the whole world.
All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is not such thing as a non-religious subject.

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“The pride of any mother is to give birth to a responsible and successful child.”

Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657
Works, Pride and Prejudice

“The poet writes his poem for its own sake, for the sake of that order of things in which the poem takes the place that has awaited it.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Obscurity of the Poet”, p. 24
Poetry and the Age (1953)
Context: People always ask: For whom does the poet write? He needs only to answer, For whom do you do good? Are you kind to your daughter because in the end someone will pay you for being?... The poet writes his poem for its own sake, for the sake of that order of things in which the poem takes the place that has awaited it.

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