The cold directness of Sylvia Plath’s opening line of "Stillborn" is unaffectionate and distant, though the rest of the poem is very emotional and sympathetic. "These poems do not live: it is a sad diagnosis," uniquely introduces the poem’s theme of death, particularly inexplicable infant death. Plath opens her emotional questioning of why some mothers must endure the labor of a perfectly healthy infant only to have the child born deceased rather bluntly. Though she goes on to exclaim "O I cannot explain what happened to them!" and fills the rest of her poem with more lines harping on the senseless tragedy of stillbirths, her poem concludes just as coldly as it begins: "And they stupidly stare and do not speak at her." Plath’s poem is actually very similar to the short life of a stillborn baby. She describes how a baby develops perfectly healthy in the womb, and then the poem abruptly ends with an image of a lifeless infant. The conclusion also conjures the same feelings of unexpected and irreversible loss that a mother of a stillborn baby would feel. I also find the line "And they smile and smile and smile and smile at me" very interesting as well. The phrase "smile and smile" is almost cliché, but Plath’s addition of a second "smile and smile" makes the smiles seem haunting and never ending; I can feel the emptiness of a deceased infant’s expressionless face by the end of this line. Plath’s poem effectively elicits empty, confused emotions.