An Analysis Of Last Night 'By Sharon Olds Home-Baked Bread'

Both poems, “Last Night” by Sharon Olds and “Home-Baked Bread” by Sally Croft implicitly direct a theme of lust. Lust is a very strong sexual desire towards someone. The poets of these two poems demonstrate a common theme within the two by using certain strategies. In the poem “Last Night”, Olds uses figurative language, imagery and repetition to revel lust as a theme. Croft’s poem “Home-Baked Bread” uses figurative language, imagery and diction/word choice to display lust.

In “Last Night” the subject of the poem is love, with the theme addressing sex as a physical interaction that is empty without emotion and love, in other words lust. Olds carries out this theme with the use of figurative language, imagery and repetition. From the use of

these strategies the readers get a sense of what sex is like when not accompanied by love. Olds illustrates sex being “more like dragonflies in the sun, 100 degrees at noon” (lines 2-3). The encounter is full of desire, but lacks a genuine passion. Olds uses a simile to compare human sex to dragonflies. Being “like dragonflies” demonstrates the graphic, animalistic, and aggressive nature of the encounter rather than experiencing a sweet and innocent expression of love. In fact, there was “no tenderness- more like killing” (line 13). Killing is used as a metaphor to represent aggression, which isn’t killing her but rather unusual and hurtful but at the same time, pleasurable towards her. Throughout the poem, the repetition of words such as afraid and love suggest an uncertainty to the sexual encounter taking place. Olds gives the reader a complete mental image across her poem of this sexual encounter. The speaker of the poem felt a sense of security, “you secured me in your arms till I slept” (line 26). Clearly, the reader receives a clear image of a woman falling asleep on the man with his arms wrapped around her.
BODY 2
Say what effect the poem had on you.
Say what you think the poets intended and if you think they achieved their agendas.

BODY 3
In “Home-Baked Bread”, Croft indirectly compares baking bread into a more intimate session. The title gives you a sense of a homey feeling but as the reader continues it sounds as if a woman is putting together a web of sensual pleasure. Using the words of “cunning triumph” and “insinuation” (line 3) and its imagery of “heat [rising]” (line 17) and the repositioning from the kitchen to the “upstirs room”, primarily indicates that the poem is not precisely about baking, but instead about a sexual desire, in other words lust. This poem is utterly an extended metaphor, Croft puts together a play on words that strikes the imagination with vision, touch and smell. The words say one thing but mean another. Her word choice of “I have prepared a cunning triumph” (lines 2) perceive as some sort of victory that the speaker of the poem has set out to achieve. The ultimate goal is to get what she desires by using an old recipe passed from her great aunt. “Spices and herbs sealed in a porcelain jar” (line 5-6) gives the reader an image of some sort of love spell that she intends to cast.