The Sheep Child (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: James Dickey
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry, Fantasy, Animal tale
- Subjects: Children, Mothers, Human race, Sheep, Animals, Museums, Birth defects, Pastures
“The Sheep Child” is in two parts. In the first section, the poet revives the old legends of anomalous deformed births resulting from humans copulating with animals. Among these is the much-whispered-about story of the “woolly baby/ pickled in alcohol” somewhere in an obscure corner of an unnamed museum in Atlanta. Even though “The boys have taken/ Their own true wives in the city” and the sheep are now safe in the pasture, the story persists in the “terrible dust of museums.” Thus the poet imagines the sheep child saying, with his eyes, the story of his begetting,...
[The entire page is 539 words long]
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