The Lost Baby Poem

Written in mostly iambic pentameter, “the lost baby poem” contains three stanzas, the first and final of which are made up of six lines each, and the middle stanza made up of eight. The poem is relatively short, containing only 20 lines total—a testament to Clifton’s prowess in economical expression, given how expansive the world of the poem really is.

As with her brevity and unconventional punctuation, Clifton adeptly flouts tradition in her aesthetic forms; the poem departs from orthodox linear structures and qualifies as “visual poetry,” employing three significant blank spaces in Lines 9, 19, and 20. In visual poetry, the page is no longer an “invisible” vehicle for the text. Rather, the overall visual of the poem, including the page, is part of the poem’s semantics. Such blank spaces are functional units of meaning; the reader interacts with the space—reads the space. The spaces are often emphatic and, in the case of “the lost baby poem,” stand in for the otherwise absent punctuation.

The pacing of the poem reads like a journal entry, flowing deliberately and with intention without getting too bogged down in syllables and complex forms. The poem is small in scale, emphasizing the gravity of the topic discussed and calling attention to the often secret or hidden nature of