Abstract & Preface

poetry by
Adrienne Rich

Chapter I:
The hand of "El caballero de la mano al pecho"

Chapter II:
Iconographical sources of nursing and nursing gestures in pre-Christian and non-Christian cultures

Chapter III:
Iconographical sources of nursing and nursing gestures in Christian cultures

Chapter IV:
Breast-feeding forms in the Renaissance

Chapter V:
Literary sources of lactating goddesses

Chapter VI:
The meaning
of the
Ostentatio Mammarum
and the
pseudo- zygodactylous gesture

Illustrations & Bibliography

Biographical sketch

Footnotes

Small mouths, needy, suck you: This is love
--To a poet

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Remind me how we loved our mother's body
our mouths drawing the first thin
sweetness from her nipples
--Sibling mysteries

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... And how beneath

the strange male bodies
we sank in terror and resignation
and how we taught them tenderness

the holding-back, the play,
the floating of a finger
the secrets of the nipple
--Sibling mysteries, 3

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-- Adrienne Rich, The dream of
a common language
poems 1974-1977

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