Stillborn

Stillborn by Sylvia Plath

Plath claims that her poems are stillborn, and that they are without life and bear no sign of their mother. While she may be referencing whether or not the poems actually represent her, I think she is really talking about the struggle to give a poem life. Sure, a poet can use imagery and use metaphors and use stanzas and do all the right things. However, a poem is still empty if they cannot imbue it with meaning and emotion. Without these two things, a poem has nothing: it is just a pile of imagery, metaphors, and stanzas". With them, it has life, and it is no longer the stillborn piece of work that Plath mourns.