Stillborn

Though I am not a father, Sylvia Plath's poem "Stillborn" gives me a glance into the sadness a parent experiences when his/her child has died before even being born. It blends the happiness of a new life with the sadness of that life having been taken away far too quickly. "They smile and smile and smile and smile at me. And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start." I find that line to encapsulate the whole poem: a parent doesn't understand why it happened (because everything seems normal), but his/her child is dead. I do not really understand Plath's employment of conceit in the lines "They are not pigs, they are not even fish, Though they have a piggy and fishy air-" Although I understand that she is trying to relate a stillborn baby to pigs and fish, I do not comprehend how they go together. However, I love this poem's vividness, especially in the lines "They grew their toes and fingers well enough, Their little foreheads bulged with concentration." It gives the idea of a well-formed baby that should be fine, but, in the context of the poem, the sadness sets in as the reader begins to realize what has happened. Plath may not think of her poem this way, but I think this poem is one big paradox. She begins with the line "These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis." Not only does this line evoke a hint of science and gives me the feeling of a relative being diagnosed with something like cancer, but I think it also just plain lies."Stillborn" is very much alive, even if its subject matter is painfully dead. There is nothing boring about this poem, and it never falls flat. It evokes the sad emotion of a parent losing his/her loved baby and, to use the cliched phrase "to add salt to the wound," the further confusion of why he/she lost his/her seemingly healthy baby.