The Sheep Child by James Dickey

In the first part of the poem, the author tells of horrible, deformed creatures born of men sleeping with sheep. He speaks about how disfigured these children are and of how they came to be. The speaker talks about legends of these children, how one sits in a museum in Atlanta. He speaks about how this discourages boys from coupling with sheep.

This first part is composed of three, eight-line stanzas. The first stanza introduces us to the idea of boys being with sheep and, with the line "Say I have heard tell", brings about the atmosphere of telling a story, or a secret. This suggests that the author is sort of ashamed or even disgusted by these stories, but enthralled all the same. The second stanza speaks about how the creatures are dead, because they cannot live, and on display. The lines "...his eyes/Are open but you can't stand to look" suggests that the author is giving some sort of innocence to these creatures. It gives the reader the idea that maybe society puts a bad light on these children, but it's not really their fault because the sheep child looks out at the world yet we turn away. The third stanza speaks about how the boys have moved on to find wives and these sheep children are not formed anymore and the use of "we" suggests that the speaker is actually one of these sheep children.

The seconds part is composed three stanzas as well, but these are not broken up evenly. Since this part is definitely told from the perspective of one of the sheep children, this lack of organization could represent the confusion that the creature feels. The chaos and perplexity shown in the desolate tone of the second part of the poem reflects the sheep child's feelings about his situation. Mirroring the faultlessness pointed out in the first part, the innocent sheep child has a deep need to be a part of society, but society shuns him because he is deformed.

I believe this poem is a comment on society as a whole. The sheep dying while in the juices of birth makes it a baby, and according to our culture babies are innocent and faultless. Yet our society still possesses the reasoning that it is alright to ignore, outcast, or ridicule something that is different from us. Despite the taboo, the author is telling us that he means coupling between man and animal to be represented as a natural thing. The child born of it is only deformed in society's eyes, yet is is society's true deformity that causes us to discard the child as unnatural.