Analyzing Sharon Olds 'Poem On The Subway'

Poetry can follow your life all the way through, from the innocence of a child, to the end of your days. The comfort, seduction, education, occasion and hope found in poems are elaborated in Poetry Should Ride the Bus by Ruth Forman. As the poem reads on, you not only travel through the life of a person from adolescence to being elderly through vivid imagery, but also hit on specific genres of poems through the personification of poetry as the characters in the stages of life. This poem’s genres hit on what poetry should do and be, by connecting the life many of us live.

The Poem “Introduction to Poetry” is by Billy Collins, an English poet, and it is about how teachers often force students to over-analyze poetry and to try decipher every possible meaning portrayed throughout the poem rather than allowing the students to form their own interpretation of the poem based on their own experiences.

The poem “A Story” by Li young Lee tells of a young child asking his father for story. The boy simply wants a story that he has never heard, his father is bombarded with panic as he seems to think he is disappointing his son. Through analysis of structure, points of view and metaphors this seemingly simple story is transformed into a deep meaningful poem about a complex relationship between a father and son.

In the poem, “35/10” by Sharon Olds, the speaker uses wistful and jealous tones to convey her feeling about her daughter’s coming of age. The speaker, a thirty-five year old woman, realizes that as the door to womanhood is opening for her ten year old daughter, it is starting to close for her. A wistful tone is used when the speaker calls herself, “the silver-haired servant” (4) behind her daughter, indicating that she wishes she was not the servant, but the served. Referring to herself as her daughter’s servant indicates a sense of self-awareness in the speaker. She senses her power is weakening and her daughter’s power is strengthening. It also shows wistfulness for her diminishing youth, and sadness for her advancing years. This

This Poem is about the similarities and differences between the life of a Caucasian person and an African American person. The author, Sharon olds, made this essay to compare and contrast both of them. Sharon olds uses a lot of poetic devices, imagery, and traditional racial stereotypes. Sharon uses a lot of imagery in this poem, she uses most of vividly dark and light as well as animal imagery to contrast her two characters. The whole skin of an animal taken and used shows that the boy represents the inside of an animal, and the speaker represents the outside. Sharon olds utilities a lot of racial stereotypes to show the distance between the characters that exists despite the close ties and connection that they share. In many movies the person

Edson Mata “On the Subway” In “On the Subway,” Sharon Olds illustrates the differences of two individuals utilizing literary devices such as similes, imagery, and symbolism. The narrator’s thoughts give more in depth understanding to how society treat the people that are “similar” to the boy. Olds works with similes in the excerpt to contrast the people with white and black skin color; additionally, the most obvious one is in line 24 and 25, “...he absorbs the murderous beams of the nation’s heart, as black cotton absorbs the heat of the sun and holds it.” The narrator knows that African American like the young boy usually become exposed and are hurt as, “He is wearing red, like the inside of the body exposed.”

One of the techniques being used in the poem is imagery. The author, Sharon Olds, uses imagery to help us visualize what is happening while two characters are on the subway. For example, he uses imagery when the poem says, “his feet are huge, in black sneakers.” This helps us visualize how the characters feet look like, and so we could know the author is referring to a sense of “darkness.” Another text support is when it says, “casual cold look of a mugger,” this helps us envision how the white character feels fear and is judging the African American just by the way he is dressed. In continuation, when the author mentions, “he could take my coat so easily, my briefcase,” this helps us picture what the white character is thinking, and lets us know how she is fearing the African American might take violent actions against her.

In this poem, “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds the person is being racist. The poem has no other insights apart from the various racist remarks it makes. The author uses a very linear progression of events to describe the story he is trying to tell. Firstly, the author uses imagery to give a negative connotation to the other individual riding the subway.

In "On the Subway," Sharon Olds brings two worlds into close proximity by using the narrator to compare herself to another being. The narrator is wearing a dark fur coat and is a white female. The other subject is a black male who has huge feet, wears black sneakers laced with white, has the casual cold look of a mugger, has a raw face, wears red, and has a dark soul according to the narrator. The contrast between both portraits is distinctive and significant. The narrator, who has a nervous and scared tone, seems to observe the boy in detail.

In the poem The Race by Sharon Olds, we have a women who's father is about to die, and she has to overcome obstacles, such as time and her flight being canceled, in order to get to her father as soon as she can. The overall meaning of the poem is that when you have faith and are determined, no matter what obstacles get in your way, you will surpass them and do what you have to do. Parallelism, imagery and run on sentences help convey the meaning of the poem.

In “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds she uses poetic devices such as imagery, simile, and metaphor to discuss the insight of the narrator and draw a contrasting portrait in the poem. The narrator’s realization is that the color of her skin makes life pretty easy for her. The portrait that the narrator draws is how different she is to the man sitting on the other side of the train. In “On the Subway” the narrator uses metaphor to draw a contrasting portrait and the narrator says, “He has the casual cold look of a mugger, alert under hooded lids.”

We share the same beating hearts under different skin. Through Olds, we are shown that race is simply just skin color, and she takes on how we view people and life at face value. "On the Subway" gives a historical point-of-view of how some White-Americans have, and sometimes still deem African-Americans. The comparison of the appearance of the boy sitting across from her to that of a cold, casual mugger, sets the tone; mysterious and gripping. The speaker, in her furs and briefcase makes her an appealing target. Her tone implies that she feels she is in danger of this dark-skinned boy. Throughout the beginning of poem, the speaker contrasts herself from the boy. Her light skin against his dark features. Her costly animal furs and his blood red hood. The speaker then shifts her views from physical to introspective. The use of visual imagery and animal imagery in On The Subway lets readers see the differences in the characters while also conveying their vast similarities.

"The Race" by Sharon Olds is an uneasy poem about the situations a daughter has to pass in order to reach her father. The poem is broken into what seems fear and retribution. In the beginning of the poem the author addresses the characters situation, " . . . When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk, bought a ticket . .

In “On The Subway,” the narrator Sharon Olds are comparing her to some boy who is sitting on the opposite side of a car they are in. Since Sharon is well dressed compared to the boy in the car, it begins to make Sharon think of all the differences between the both of them; for example, Sharon has all of the pros, while the boy has all of the cons.

Setting (including: time span of the story, time period in which the story is set, and place[s] in which