Sharon Olds Family Life and her History

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Whether it is consciously or subconsciously, who we are as adults is very much determined (or influenced) by the experiences that we live through during childhood. These experiences and relationships that we have at such a young age can shape who we are going to be for the rest of our lives. Sharon Olds is a great poet who dives very deeply into her own memories, particularly ones of her childhood, to figure out what they actually mean to her. In doing this, Sharon Olds writes some pretty edgy poems that can make people cringe from the extreme amount of sexual details and emotion that comes with them. The main ideas of these poems can range anywhere from the glass that the speaker’s father is spitting into before he dies (The Glass) to the speaker and a significant other considering suicide at a restaurant (The Promise). This is what makes her an awesome poet though; she digs through her memory to find the experiences that had the biggest impression on her life, evaluates them, and then unashamedly tells about every detail. While writing in this way, Sharon Olds has an amazing ability to point out social inequalities to the reader. These inequalities are specifically pertaining to the patriarchy that we live in today and what effect it has on femininity and masculinity, especially speaking in terms of father/ daughter relationships. The memories she writes about are all very personal and tell of many family problems that she had at the time of her childhood and adolescence. Whether it be the speaker and her sister playing with dolls while their parents fought (The Pact), the speaker remembering when her mother divorced her father (The Victims), the speaker telling about her feelings when her father died (The Feelings), or when t... ... middle of paper ... ...y my mother swam in me.” The speaker wants to make her daughter happy, while the speaker’s mother just wants her so that she could be happy. Olds can certainly push the envelope when it comes to controversial messages in her poetry. Whether the poem is about sex, violence, death, or feelings, the reader can expect Olds to bring her family into the mix to really make one think about their life as well. In my opinion, Sharon Olds is not the extreme feminist that many think she is. She still has many attachments to her father and he died when she was very young. Even though Olds would probably identify with these connections as only biological or genetic, that is still something. Nevertheless, Olds has always been infatuated with gender roles and includes them in almost all of her works even though she doesn’t talk about them specifically, there are many examples.

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