In Marcus Wicker’s “Dear Mothership”, we create a “mothership”, which can mean a variety of things in the sense of Wicker’s mind state and perspective, as well of course as our own thoughts and perspective in reading this poem and determining our own “mothership” and what it may represent in our life. The Mothership is God, the Mothership is our mother, it is a shield from the reeking of mother earth. Funk, rap, and Outkast inspired, Wicker weaves his way through his invented ambrosia of America to put on a lens, gathering a light, and searching to be human in the world he sees. This was a bit of an exercise I did for myself to try to further understand this poem and articulate my thoughts and analysis the best I could, “Mothership”, is quite obviously a prominent term and idea present in Wicker’s own thoughts, and his then published poem, it is in the title, and then mentioned multiple times throughout the poem, so it should have some importance. I then wrote out everything that sprung to mind from the word “Mothership”, anything that explicitly opened itself up to my thoughts. I did that for multiple other terms like “obsidian” and “wings” in order to find a pattern between all the terms that would add up and connect to some greater interpretive structure. Aztecs and angels, volcano black and feather white, messengers of death. I was hoping to find that in analyzing a poem, and searching for patterns, poetry, and writing, could be simple accreting. Building molecules with atoms. Tissue with molecules. Organs with tissue. Bodies with organs.
Through my thoughts and patterns, I rounded out a certain feel for Wicker and his intention, perspective, and meaning. I first wanted to take note of the free verse form that Wicker applies here because there is of course some purpose to it, I mostly took this creative choice as one that was done to fully flesh out the allowance of a more flexible and creative way of writing his poetry as after I read this, and took note of the form and structure, I thought a bit to myself about how this poem may work if written in a completely different way or style. This poem, by following a natural rhythm of speech, it mirrors Wicker’s perspective on the patterns of life, his America is a false prophet of life. He wants his mothership, whatever forms it may take to protect him from the creases of grief and despair that the country he lives in carves in his face. The “dialogue” in italics that are used here, are quite a bit more heightened by the free verse form as it never applies each line an assigned persona, except for the “Say: Together we can do the necessary”, offering the reader to now be the speaker. With the plight of America being a breach and obstacle to be faced in life, Wicker opens up dialogue to the reader, using his voice to speak for all to the Mothership. The style and structure of the poem, offers Wickers some authenticity to the reader, as he has no need or interest in assigning a persona to his words, he is inspired to write by his own experiences and perspective, so he seamlessly can shift from gritty, raw tones, to more introspective writing.
Imagery is the most important device Wicker uses in this poem because when looking at the Mothership, in more literal terms, it is a massive ship that carries other ships and looks over the space it hovers over. Wicker is, or once was, one that was carried by this Mothership, and as are those he was speaking to, as he then reaches out to us with the dialogue in the poem hoping “If only in the beginning someone said:”, or “If only from the jump pled everyone at the house party”. He calls for us to see how the Earth is reeking, a stink that dampens and clouds the roses of the world that the speaker covets so dearly. Throughout the poem, he combines this imagery with a musical like rhythm, even again going back to those first two lines, the strong prominence on the K sounds, and “ing”, bouncing from “reeking” to “winged” to “clinged”, give the imagery a rhythm to it, making the use of free verse that much more useful. The country is plagued by political discontent, with the character of America being branded and inflamed with red and blue cells with a straw to punch through both.
