As one of America’s leading contemporary poet’s, Sharon Olds is known for the intense personal and emotional poetry that she writes. Her ability to intimately and graphically divulge details of her personal life allows readers to delve into the deepest parts of not only her mind, but of their own as well. Sharon Olds uses her writing to allow readers to experience the good and bad of life through her eyes, yet allows readers the interpretive freedom to define her works as they fit into their own lives. Olds’ ability to depict both wonderful and tragic events in stories such as “First Thanksgiving” and “Still Life in Landscape”with beautifully gruesome clarity allow readers a gritty real-life experience unlike any other. In Olds’ work entitled …show more content…
In “First Thanksgiving” Olds opens up to the readers about her excitement when her daughter returns home from college for the Thanksgiving holiday. She describes how she will hug her daughter, and smell her hair, and relish in the feel of her in her arms. It is through these moments that readers are also allowed the joy of having their child in their arms again-savoring their warm skin, the scent of their hair as they hug, the moment between mother and daughter as they reconnect. The imagery is so strong, strong enough in fact that readers can share in that joy, the feel, and the emotion with the writer. Olds continues to create a nostalgic feeling of times long ago, rocking and feeding a baby by moonlight. The bittersweet feeling a mother has knowing that her child has grown and those days are gone. Olds reflects even more by stating “As a child, I caught bees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds, looked into their wild faces, listened to them sing, then tossed them back into the air- I remember the moment the arc of my toss swerved, and they entered the corrected curve of their departure”. It is in those lines readers can see Olds catching bees which represent her children, and while she only held onto them for a little time while they were growing- she loved every minute of their youth, reveling in their songs and their wildness as children. In true motherly fashion she releases …show more content…
Her ability to use incredibly graphic details poetically just enhance the experience for the reader. Her car ride is a solemn one, and readers are introduced to the disturbances inside of the car as well as outside. Olds is able to express to readers the issues her father has with drinking while associating it to the death outside of the car as well. She is able to bring readers into the dark car with her, witnessing the wreckage, the cars strewn over the highway, and most importantly the body of the woman. While the accident wasn’t any fault of the car she is riding in, she is up front with readers how her father is not quite sober, and just missed hitting someone himself. Olds is able to use the graphic imagery of the accident and the somber interior of the car to express the family struggles she endured as well. Sheltered by her mother from the scene outside, she is left reflecting on the life that is represented on the road. Readers can feel the dark turn of her thoughts as she compares the carnage on the road as “…glass, bone, metal, flesh, and the family” (Olds). It is this ending in which Olds allows readers to understand the complexity of feelings that were associated with the accident on the dark rain covered highway. Reflecting on the
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
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.
We’ve all wondered and wracked our brains over the questions and nature of humankind, to which we have no true and final answers: how every moment lived and this moment you live right now, will simply be a memory, the daunting inevitability of death, life’s transience, the irreversibility of time, the loss of innocence with ages…it is in the human condition to question such things; and this mutual similarity in wonder, to me, is beautiful. I intertwine these universal topics into my poetry, particularly Father & Child and the Violets, to transcend time and provide meaning to a range of different contexts, whilst reflecting my own context and values.
This darkly satiric poem is about cultural imperialism. Dawe uses an extended metaphor: the mother is America and the child represents a younger, developing nation, which is slowly being imbued with American value systems. The figure of a mother becomes synonymous with the United States. Even this most basic of human relationships has been perverted by the consumer culture. The poem begins with the seemingly positive statement of fact 'She loves him ...’. The punctuation however creates a feeling of unease, that all is not as it seems, that there is a subtext that qualifies this apparently natural emotional attachment. From the outset it is established that the child has no real choice, that he must accept the 'beneficence of that motherhood', that the nature of relationships will always be one where the more powerful figure exerts control over the less developed, weaker being. The verb 'beamed' suggests powerful sunlight, the emotional power of the dominant person: the mother. The stanza concludes with a rhetorical question, as if undeniably the child must accept the mother's gift of love. Dawe then moves on to examine the nature of that form of maternal love. The second stanza deals with the way that the mother comforts the child, 'Shoosh ... shoosh ... whenever a vague passing spasm of loss troubles him'. The alliterative description of her 'fat friendly features' suggests comfort and warmth. In this world pain is repressed, real emotion pacified, in order to maintain the illusion that the world is perfect. One must not question the wisdom of the omnipotent mother figure. The phrase 'She loves him...' is repeated. This action of loving is seen as protecting, insulating the child. In much the same way our consumer cultur...
Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in San Francisco. After graduating from Stanford she moved east to earn a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. Olds describes the completion of her doctorate as a transitional moment in her life: standing on the steps of the library at Columbia University, she vowed to become a poet, even if it meant giving up everything she had learned. The vow she made--to write her own poetry, no matter how bad it might be--freed her to develop her own voice. Olds has published eight volumes of poetry, includes The Dead and the Living (1984), The Wellspring (1996), The Gold Cell, (1987) etc. As in her earlier works, she has been praised for the courage and emotional power of her work which continues to witness pain, love, desire, and grief with persistent courage. "Sex Without Love," by Sharon Olds passionately describes the author's disgust for casual sex and her attitude toward loveless sex as a cold and harmful act. She brilliantly uses various poetic techniques to animate the immortality of loveless sex through her words and her great description evoke clear image in the reader mind.
“Poet Billy Collins has said of her work, “Julie Sheehan possesses a range of tones- tender, sassy, quietly observant, deeply cutting” (www.poetryfoundation.com). In an interview with Julie Sheehan, the interviewee h...
The death camp was a terrible place where people where killed. Hitler is who created the death camp for Jews. The death camp was used for extermination on Jews. This occurred on 1939 – 1945. The death camps were in the country of Europe. Hitler did all this because he didn’t like Jews and the religions. The book Night is a autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. The poem called First they came for the communist written by Martin Neimoller is a autobiography.
Common curtesy has us saying “Thanks” to the point that we may have lost the intentions associated with the response. W.S. Merwin sums up this anomaly in his poem “Thanks”, saying “with nobody listening we are saying thank you” (Merwin 29). We say thanks for so many meaningless things that it no longer carry’s the true intent of the speaker. Instead it is a response to acknowledge the receiver rather than giving true thanks. This repetition allows for questions regarding what are we truly thankful for, and how we make this known to the receiver. Carl Dennis, in his poem, “Thanksgiving Letter From Harry”, struggles with this question. Not seeing himself thankful for all the negative atrocities around him, he tries to find something he can stand up and be thankful for with limited success, “I’m, thankful today I don’t reside in a country/My country has chosen to liberate” (Dennis 2-3). Generic overuse of such a simple, but meaningful word, has made saying “thanks” somewhat mundane, making it harder to express their gratitude to the receiver seamlessly.
During fall, the leaves fall, the temperature drops, and people sit around a table and say what they are thankful for. While we are consuming pounds of turkey and stuffing, the Pilgrims are to thank for the annual feast. Because the meaning of this holiday is to not stuff your face with endless amount of carbs, we should be reminded of how grateful we are for what we own. Thanksgiving was a very memorable time in U.S. history.
As a child, Sharon Olds childhood was described as a “hellfire.” Growing up, she was told that she was going to hell. In Olds’ poem, she tries to express how she felt about her early childhood with an abusive father and relationships with her family. Olds wrote many poems about her relationship with her helpless, alcoholic father and her path to help deal with these memories and forgiving her father to loving the dying man. Most of Olds poems are about her journey from an abusive household to healing her past memories from a man she disgusted with. Her poems are ways of her speaking in loud tone describing domestic violence, sexuality, and family relationships. Like any poem, “His Stillness” the theme of the poem was about Olds getting close to her father w...
Every parent in this world loves their children more than anything. Even the children can’t stay away from their parents for so long. Nothing in this world could be more precious than the love of a parent has for his/her children. Our parents are always with us no matter what happens. Often in life we make mistakes, but our parents give us supports and teach us to learn from those mistakes and move on with our lives. They also try to teach us from their experience. Parents always make sacrifices to provide for their family. In the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Huges and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, the poets talk about how the parents are always making sacrifices to make their children’s life a little bit easier. Both of these poems reveal the struggle the parents go through in order to provide for their family.
It was a warm sunny day in the summer of the nineteen nighties nine, at the Jersey Shore. Sally stood outside her grandparents ' house with hesitation. Should Juan and I have come? Sally thinks to herself. Sally then begins to gaze out at the ocean 's shorelines. As if time had stood still and the world faded away. She closed her eyes and took it all in. It made her think of all the wonderful childhood memories that they had achieved there. Sally remembered playing in the sand, swimming in the ocean, the bright sun gazing down upon her and a boy. This place had memories that Sally would never forget and treasure forever, for that kid now a man was always in her heart and her life.
Auto Wreck is an ominous, grim, and disturbing poem written by Karl Shapiro about death, fate, coincidence and the envisioning of reality. In this harsh poem Shapiro describes an awful car accident where many people ends up dead. He flawlessly employes a unique imagery and language that gives the reader a clear and true sensation of the terrible mishap. The author makes us feel as if we had seen and even experienced the car collision ourselves. Although it may see that the main focus in this poem is death, which is one of the most important, the poet also throws in the way he and everyone else saw everything after the accident, how their emotions changed, and how they envisioned reality afterward. Shapiro not only acknowledges and makes vivid the deaths that just occurred and how different people reacted to it, but he also discusses how much of an accident it really was, how someone had to be guilty and if anyone was really innocent at all.
Poetry is the wind for a trapped and wounded soul. A great example of a wounded soul is, Sylvia Plath. She was an immaculate poet, who expressed her personal troubles through writing. As Plath’s life smouldered into a heap of dust at the age of 30, her poetry grew and bloomed. In the years before her death, her most troubled period, Plath penned three of her most well-known poems, “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus” and “Tulips”—all three illustrating the horrors of despair with strong, expressive literary devices. Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30, has been hailed ubiquitously as one of the most acclaimed and preeminent poets of the 21st century. Plath’s poetry was influenced by tragic events in her life and her prolonged battle against her deep depression and obsession with death. Plath’s personal issues made her the definition of a confessional poet. In the poems, “Daddy”, “Tulips”, and “Lady Lazarus”, Plath confesses her emotional and nervous breakdowns during her endless depression.
And as she was thinking of how to get to a taxi the stale air suddenly was disrupted by a draft from an open door or window from down stairs. So she started to run down the wet road to get to a taxi so she could go home. And she got to town where there should be and is a taxi waiting, so she got in and it took off and she had realized she had not told him where to go. So she decided to scratch the glass, and when she did the driver almost slammed the brakes almost to a stop. He opened the glass window and this jolted Mrs. Drovers head forward almost hitting the glass, and their faces weren’t but 6 inches apart, her mouth was opened for a few seconds before she screamed. She was beating on the glass as the taxi accelerated without mercy, into the hinterland of deserted streets. And we can all assume that the driver was her old