Olds expresses extreme boldness throughout her poetry, her directness stems from the lack of censorship found in her poems. In an interview, Olds explained that she worries less about censorship yet and realizes there is a need to edit her first drafts (Olds, “Advice to Young Poets”). When it comes to finalizing a poem, multiple drafts are required. Refining and creating the ideal way to deliver the topic of choice. In Olds case, the lack of worrying shows in her topics, she expresses necessities and fixes the mechanics later on. Many critics even called Olds’ poetry pornographic due to the rawness and unique topics. Olds addresses the concept in an interview, “I have never felt that, but then I heard ‘slick and whole’, it sounded too bold …show more content…
Getting the message on the page without distortion is the vital part. Even Olds finds herself at times trying to create fictional topics, “And very often there will be a long period of hours or days maybe even weeks. When I say, ‘Sharon this is not your subject. You weren’t there you don’t know this’” (“Sharon”). This shows that Olds is very perceptive when it comes to her poetry. She does not make up or write poems in which she does not directly experience or know about. The perceptiveness shows that Olds is able to step back and see when she strays from her views. These poems would be impossible without the many experiences and influences from Olds growing up in 1960’s.
Olds developed into the person she is today through her many influences of being a young adult in the 1960’s. The 1960’s was an extremely important time for America and the people living there. The generation growing up in this time period denounced all ideas of materialism and conformity (“The Sixties”). Sharon Olds rejection of conformity can be seen throughout her poetry and values. Many of her poems go against the stereotypical topics, they confront harsh ideas and realities that people purposefully overlooked in generations to follow. This influence also led to many
The poem is written in the style of free verse. The poet chooses not to separate the poem into stanzas, but only by punctuation. There is no rhyme scheme or individual rhyme present in the poem. The poems structure creates a personal feel for the reader. The reader can personally experience what the narrator is feeling while she experiences stereotyping.
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...
to the powerful imagery she weaves throughout the first half of the poem. In addition, Olds
Sex is more than just a physical act. It's a beautiful way to express love. When people have sex just to fulfill a physical need, as the poet believes sex outside of love-based relationship only harms and cheapens sex. In the beginning of the poem, Olds brilliantly describe the beauty of sex, and then in the second half of the poem, she continues reference to the cold and aloneness which clearly shows her opinions about causal sex. Through this poem, Sharon Olds, has expressed her complete disrespect for those who would participate in casual sex.
Alexander’s beautiful poems of witness and stream of consciousness; however, are the poems that I have gained the most from. In American Sublime, there is an entire section dedicated to witness poetry. While reading the witness poems, I noticed that Alexander put a significant amount of research into her witness poetry; from learning the names of slaves, to pulling official court documents. This demonstrates how serious poems are witnessing are. These are not poems that one can write without an extensive amount of knowledge. Elizabeth Alexander’s witness poems are a tremendous example of what a witness poem should be. In addition to this form of poetry, Alexander’s stream of conciseness poems have broaden my ideas on what those poems can look like. Until now, I have been intimidates by stream of conciseness poems. They were full of energy, often anger, and decorated with cursing. Although I enjoy reading these poems, I cannot bring myself to write this way. Therefore, I never attempted to write a stream of consciousness poem. However, Elizabeth Alexander’s stream of consciousness poems are not like this. While they are energetic, they are not an angry or annoyed tone; instead, they are explanative. This style is one that I am comfortable with writing, and plan to attempt one day. Hopefully, with the guidance of Elizabeth Alexander’s work , I will
When sorting through the Poems of Dorothy Parker you will seldom find a poem tha¬t you could describe as uplifting or cheerful. She speaks with a voice that doesn’t romanticize reality and some may even call her as pessimistic. Though she doesn’t have a buoyant writing style, I can empathize with her views on the challenges of life and love. We have all had experiences where a first bad impression can change how we view an opportunity to do the same thing again. Parker mostly writes in a satirical or sarcastic tone, which can be very entertaining to read and analyze.
“When You Are Old” is about Maud Gonne, an Irish nationalist who William Butler Yeats was infatuated with and his unrequited love for her. In the poem, Maud Gonne is reflecting on past loves and relationships. She realizes that Yeats was her only companion who loved her unconditionally. Many loved her, or said they did, but not in every respect like Yeats. Perhaps if her realization were sooner, Yeats would have married her.
Throughout the world, there are rudimentary gender characteristics, both physical and psychological, that differentiate a man from a woman. However, some people do not associate themselves with these stereotypical characteristics. Notwithstanding the amount of progress achieved in the past few decades, gender stereotypes are still solemn. Qualities like strength, intellect and sexual deviance are usually associated with men, while qualities like irrational, emotional and insecure are more relevant to women. In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Dorothy Livesay’s “The Unquiet Bed”, each poet captures the expression of female
When writing poetry, there are many descriptive methods an author may employ to communicate an idea or concept to their audience. One of the more effective methods that authors often use is linking devices, such as metaphors and similes. Throughout “The Elder Sister,” Olds uses linking devices effectively in many ways. An effective image Olds uses is that of “the pressure of Mother’s muscles on her brain,” (5) providing a link to the mother’s expectations for her children. She also uses images of water and fluidity to demonstrate the natural progression of a child into womanhood. Another image is that of the speaker’s elder sister as a metaphorical shield, the one who protected her from the mental strain inflicted by their mother.
It is a way to crucially engage oneself in setting the stage for new interventions and connections. She also emphasized that she personally viewed poetry as the embodiment of one’s personal experiences, and she challenged what the white, European males have imbued in society, as she declared, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.”
Fear is an amazing emotion, in that it has both psychological as well as physiological effects on the human body. In instances of extreme fear, the mind is able to function in a way that is detached and connected to the event simultaneously. In “Feared Drowned,” Sharon Olds presents, in six brief stanzas, this type of instance. Her sparse use of language, rich with metaphors, similes and dark imagery, belies the horror experienced by the speaker. She closes the poem with a philosophical statement about life and the after-effects that these moments of horror can have on our lives and relationships.
Marianne Moore ranked with Emily Dickinson among America’s finest woman poets. Moore crafted her poems superbly. She generally used poetic forms in which the controlling element is the number and arrangement of syllables rather than c...
Nikki Giovanni and Linda Hogan both wrote poems in the 1970s about their grandmothers that seem totally different to the unaware reader. In actuality, they are very similar. These two poems, Legacies and Heritage, express the poet’s value of knowledge passed down from grandmother to granddaughter, from generation to generation. Even though the poems are composed and read very differently, the underlying message conveyed is the same, and each are valid first-hand accounts of legacies and heritages.
The inventive imagery within Plath’s poetry allows the reader an insight into her frame of mind, and though she could be seen as a confessional poet through the specific details that she includes from her own life, we do see how she has manipulated these events and characters within her poems to realise the outcome she desires, as seen in ‘Lady Lazarus’. But even when she is not directly referring to a personal detail, the reader is still able to interpret the speaker’s emotions within poems, and in many instances correlate them to Plath’s own feelings. Despite this, it is difficult to separate Plath’s poetry from the circumstances of her tragic death, and thus the reader imprints their own idea of how Plath might have felt whilst writing her later poetry. This also applies to Hughes, after Plath’s suicide, when his poetry became raw and macabre with the birth of ‘Crow’, and though Hughes is not deemed a biographical poet in the way that Plath is, his poetry does portray his emotions just as strongly as Plath’s does. He too uses imagery and form to capture the grim violence within the collection. The reader can deduce the fragile emotional state that Hughes had to endure through a difficult period of his life through the character of ‘Crow’ within his poems. When reading the poetry that Plath produced just prior
Many times poetry is reflective of the author’s past as well as their personal struggles. One struggle that poets write about is of identity and the creation, as well as loss, of individual identities. Using a passage from the essay Lava Cameo by Eavan Boland, I will show how two poets use their craft to describe their struggle with identity. Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney both write poems which express an internal struggle with roles of identity and how they recreate their roles to fit their needs. Through retrospection and reflection, both poets come to realize that the roles they led as well as those they reinvented have created their own personal identities. Boland, in her essay Lava Cameo, touches on several emotions (loss, despair, etc) and episodes in her life which capture the essence of her identity. It is this notion of individual identity that is a central theme throughout Boland’s essay and some of her poems. Boland, through retrospection and hindsight, has been able to recognize the roles that society has dictated that she follow. These roles were not necessarily created for any rational reason (ex: female role as subordinate and even as marital property). One passage in particular captures the internal struggles Boland has endured. This passage runs from pages 27 to 29 in Boland’s Object Lessons. It begins by saying, "It may not be that women poets of another generation…" and ends with "…but because of poetry."