Sharon Olds and Linda Pastan are renowned post-modernistic poets who aptly portray domestic life based on their perceived ideas of women in the home and personal family experiences. Sharon Olds refuses to give details about her personal life, but her poems appear to be autobiographical in nature (Encyclopedia of Women’s Autobiography credoreference.com). In this week’s poems Sharon Olds explores motherhood (herself and her mother), sexuality, and a not so fond memory of her father. Olds’ references to motherhood in the poems, this week would lead the reader to feel that she had a fair relationship with her mother, which translated to her having a meaningful relationship with her children. Linda Pastan is an accomplished poet who …show more content…
The narrator then goes on to describe how she views the daughter as being the second great arrival within the household. Even though the daughter was the second “great arrival” in her household (the husband was the first), the narrator goes into great depth of how she slept, nursed, and grew up all in a blur, thus leading the reader to believe that even though she was second, she was always first to the narrator. At the end of the poem, the narrator compares the coming and eventual going of her daughter with bees that she caught when she was young. The bee will fly freely until caught, while in captivity it will sing its song, but when released will continue to fly away (Olds poetry foundation.org). This verse is a reference to her daughter coming home and eventually leaving. The theme behind Old’s poem is that of the narrator’s intense love for her daughter, and probably relates to the old adage “if you love something set it free, and it will come back again.” Linda Pastan’s poem “I am Learning to Abandon the World” has a similar setting of being in the home, but the themes are different. The reader could interpret the overall theme of the poem is Pastan’s inability to sleep well. Why is the author not sleeping well? “[T]he world has taken my father, my friends” would lead the reader to believe that the author is coping with the death of
The jealous tone disappears at the end, however, and the poem ends wistfully and resigned stating that, “It’s an old/story—the oldest we have on our planet--/the story of replacement” (16-18). The speaker realizes that aging is part of the continuous life process, which starts at birth and ends at death. She understands that each phase of life has a specific purpose for maintaining the species. Her daughter must mature so she can create new life, just as the speaker did ten years ago. She knows that eventually her daughter will replace her and that the life process will continue to repeat itself for generations to come.
Poets have the power to present their perspectives of the human experience through their poetic voice. Gwen Harwood, Judith Wright, and Bruce Dawe, all Australian poets have all expressed common ideas expressed by their unique poetic voice.They also speak for those who have no voice, such as the soldiers in Bruce Dawe’s poem Homecoming and in Gwen Harwood's poem Mother Who Gave Me Life where she gives a voice to the Mothers. A key theme resinating through all of these poets poems would be their common ideas on society and the role of a mother.
Sharon Olds was the leading contemporary poet of her time, she has acclaimed several prestigious awards and is well known for her emotional poetry that depicts her family life as she was growing up. In the poem, “The One Girl at the Boy’s Party,” Olds writes a first person narrative depicting a mother witnessing her daughter's approach to maturity. The daughter, who is well versed in mathematics, attends a swimming party composed of all boys. The mother observes her daughter and watches her cross the threshold of childhood innocence to young adolescents. The values and thought of adolescence are symbolized by mathematics, which represents maturity of thought and a new insight into the young girl as she becomes a young woman. This poem also
“Daystar” by Rita Dove is an expressive poem, which centers on the main character, a young mother and wife, who internally struggles with her burdensome, daily duties, which creates a lack of freedom in her world. Dove’s choice of words lets the reader empathize with her confined life. In this poem, irony exists for the mere fact that from birth to adulthood the female population is brought up to feel fulfilled by simply becoming a wife and mother; however, this poem describes the monotonous duties and the joyless bond that can be between husband and wife.
Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco on November 19, 1942. At age fifteen, she was sent to a boarding school in Massachusetts. Many of her poems focus on difficult childhood and the body. As Olivia Laing, literary critic of several literary novels and publications, says, “The physical body is a document of being, physical experience is the primary mode of forming, and physical contact is the primary human relationship.” Like Whitman, Olds celebrates the body in its pleasures and pains. She is a contemporary poet who focuses on autobiographical poems mostly of sexual or violent nature and personal experience. She particularly resonates with women readers and women’s connections with family members and lovers of the past and present through physical, sexual, and emotional means. She writes frequently about her sadistic, alcoholic father and victimized mother. Her dysfunctional family plays an enormous role in her poetry, especially in “The Day They Tied Me Up.” This poem is inspired by true events and the feelings and emotions felt by the poet during a memorable aspect of her childhood.
Linda Pastan is known for writing exemplary poetry. According to the Poetry Foundation, “in her senior year at Radcliffe College, Pastan won the Mademoiselle poetry prize. Immediately following graduation, however, she decided to give up writing poetry in order to concentrate on raising her family” (“Linda Pastan”). Pastan graduated college in the 1950’s, and societies expectations for women to be a wife and mother perhaps influenced her decision. According to the Poetry Foundation, “after ten years at home, her husband urged her to return to poetry. Since the early 1970s, Pastan has produced quiet lyrics…and is interested in the anxieties that exist under the surface of everyday life” (“Linda Pastan”). Pastan’s poems “The Obligation to Be Happy” and “Why Are Your Poems so Dark?” both deliver similar thoughts, that life is a balance between happiness and unhappiness. However, despite similar feelings on life, both poems have significant differences. Although “The Obligation to Be Happy” focuses on personal emotions and “Why Are Your Poems so Dark?” is a response to critics, both poems suggest that life is not always pleasing.
The poem, "The Night House" by Billy Collins, is very symbolic and meaningful, and most people can relate to because everyone has something they are not content with in life. Collins is a great, straightforward writer that people can depict with in his poems because he is practical and uses simple things or everyday experiences in an easy way. This poem in particular is very symbolic and effortless to analyze because it is the everyday life--- going to work, coming home, and then going to sleep--- the cycle then repeats over and over. He talks about "the body works" at the beginning (which sets the tone for the rest of the poem), which symbolizes that our hearts and minds are not always into what we are doing. He talks and illustrates figurative parts of the body: the heart, mind, conscience, and soul. When he talks about the woman sleeping, all these figurative body parts are restless and come out at night to do what they really want to do.
In Susan Wood’s poem “Eggs,” she describes what her mornings were like growing up and how they later affected her parenting. She discusses that if she had sat down with her father to work through their issues rather than argue, they could have been happier people in the end. To emphasize these points, she uses repetition and pattern to create a feeling of hostility toward her childhood. Wood’s use of diction and allusion illustrates the speaker’s attitude toward mornings and her upbringing to shed light on how harboring feelings can create animosity toward family members.
Opportunities for an individual to develop understanding of themselves stem from the experiences attained on their journey through life. The elements which contribute to life are explored throughout Gwen Harwood’s poems, At Mornington and Mother Who Gave Me Life, where the recollection of various events are presented as influences on the individual’s perception of the continuity of life. Both poems examine the connections between people and death in relation to personal connections with the persona’s father or mother. By encompassing aspects of human nature and life’s journey, Harwood addresses memories and relationships which contribute to one’s awareness of life.
When it comes to the science of psychology, there have been a multitude of great contributors, researches who put forth the effort to try and comprehend those who face mental challenges and disabilities as well as those who posse abnormal capabilities. Lightner Witmer and Inez Beverly Prosser are perfect examples of pioneers who have contributed to the science.
Sylvia Plath and Gwen Harwood tell two very different stories of parental relationships, Mother Who Gave Me Life praising Harwood’s mother and speaking with love and affection, whereas Plath’s Daddy is full of hate for her father. These reflections on the poet’s parental relationships are made using imagery, symbolism and tone.
Within stanza six the narrator is returning home and the imagery and word choice convey a feeling of emptiness and a dark, depressing atmosphere.
The mother-daughter relationship is often scrutinized, publicized, and capitalized on. Whether from tell-all biographies, to humorous sit-coms, or private therapy sessions, this particular relationship dynamic gives some of the most emotion-activating memories. When female authors reflect and write about their relationships with their mothers, they have a tendency to taint their reflections with the opinions they have as an adult, reviewing the actions of their mother when they were young. These opinions set the tone of the story independently and in conjunction with the relationship itself and manifest in creative literary styles that weave an even more intricate story. Case in point, when reviewing the two literary works “I Stand Here
Linda Pastan made this poem include various forms of figurative language to hide the literal message that it's trying to portray. Figurative language is using figures of speech to make the text be more powerful, persuasive, and meaningful. Figures of speech such as, similes and metaphors, go beyond the literal meanings to give the readers a new way of looking at the text. It can come in multiple ways with different literacy and rhetorical devices such as: alliteration, imageries, onomatopoeias, and etc. With the usage of the literary devices Pastan has used, it introduced the relationship between the mother and the daughter. It shows the memories of how the mother helped her daughter grow from a little girl to a young adult getting ready to go her own way in life.
By the end of the poem, there is a shift. The housewife transforms into a “driver” (15) of her own life. The use of figurative language is intended to focus on the drastic change a woman undergoes. The act of driving has been exclusive to man, now a woman can drive i.e. she can write against the canonical arena. Driving epitomizes how she strives to “[learn] the last bright routes” and become a real “survivor” (17). Sexton is detaching herself from the patriarchal authority the day she finds refuge in writing. An identity of a mother or a housewife has to contrast with the conformity to the conventional roles of the domestic rituals. A woman has to move beyond the stereotypes, society imposes on her, for the sake of safeguarding her family. If Sexton is unashamed of being an iron woman, life bestows her success. She sabotages the conventional norms, subverts gender stereotypes and calls for the rights of women who are “her kind” (21) to transcend the sordid aspect of patriarchy. Now, she “[is] going to show them [her] sexts! (Cixous 885). The same imagery is provided by Sylvia Plath who, in her poem “Mirror,” reflects the female ongoing defeat of a distorted domestic happiness. The call for liberating the housewife from the domestic sphere better pins down Plath’s reformulation of the female identity away from “the patriarchal perception of [her] existence” (Ghasemi 58). Once she delves “through a violent transformation of her