16 pages • 32 minutes read
Lucille CliftonThe Lost Baby Poem
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Water
Water, in various forms, is a recurrent motif throughout Clifton’s “lost baby poem.” It appears in every stanza, first when the speaker recalls dropping the “almost body / down to meet the waters under the city” (Lines 1-2). The water flows under the city, almost hidden or secret, pumping fresh drinking water in and taking dirty water out. The reference to the plumbing of the city represents the hidden mechanisms that make the world work. For the speaker, her abortion is something private or unseen, but something that happens nonetheless. The idea of currents—water being pushed out to sea and back in as difficult memories—both represents the “almost body” (Line 1), and the speaker’s emotions. The speaker draws the connection between the imagined child and snow, which will eventually melt to “run one with the sewage to sea” (Line 2). Water in this poem is constantly moving and flowing, coming in to drown the speaker with memories and flowing out to take away the pain. Therefore, the speaker vows to let the waters overtake her should she not be a good mother to her other children: “let the rivers pour over my head” (Line 17). She almost feels she owes a debt to the ocean, that in terminating her pregnancy she betrayed the ocean: “let the sea take me for a spiller / of seas” (Lines 18-19). Water is a powerful symbol of cleansing, life, and strength, but it is also a treacherous force of nature.
Winter
Winter features centrally in the poem, as it not only dramatizes the difficulties of poverty, but represents suffering and a general lack of comfort and care. As a season, winter is stark, cold, and barren. It is typically associated with darkness and hopelessness. Being cold is a particularly uncomfortable and relatable experience, and the speaker conveys the direness of her situation by describing the frigid conditions. Even the walk she imagines making to give up her child takes place in the freezing cold: “we would have made the thin / walk over genesee hill into the canada wind” (Lines 9-10); and when she finally gives the child away it is like slipping on ice, “to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands” (Line 11). These desolate wintertime images represent the bleak prospects for the speaker’s future. Much like wintertime, this point in the speaker’s life was uncomfortable, frozen, and empty. The speaker feels that nothing can grow in these conditions.
Disconnected Gas & No Car
The two most important symbols for the speaker’s poverty are these small details in the middle stanza. Without giving any other details, the speaker paints a picture of her hardship with only a few words, “in the year of the disconnected gas / and no car” (Lines 8-9). Despite the brevity of their allusion, the two symbols, heat and transportation, encompass a certain totality of human experience and necessity; heat speaks to essential sustenance, while transportation speaks to freedom. So few words conveying a vast reality, this economical utterance clarifies just how difficult the speaker’s life was at this time. If she had no car, it would be extremely difficult for her to get to a job or the store just for basic needs. If she didn’t have access to a properly heated home, not only is that incredibly wearisome, but it is also potentially dangerous in a cold winter like the one the speaker describes. Without these basic resources for survival, life can become almost impossible.
Related Titles
By Lucille Clifton
