Sharon Olds Essay

ex without love The poem, “sex without love” by Sharon Olds portrays the issues in the society today. Casual sex is on the rise and Olds is puzzled how one can have sex without loving the other partner. She states, “How do they do it, the ones who make love without sex?” (Line 1). She, however, describes sex with beautiful imagery of dancers, making it appealing but the eventual feeling of loneliness is inevitable. Olds choice of words, imagery, and symbolism throughout her texts is contrasting;

The poem Rite of Passage by Sharon Olds is a poem about a mother chaperoning her son’s birthday party. The boy and his friends are in first grade and of course they are behaving as first graders would. They say things like, “How old are you? Six. – I’m seven. –So?” (8) And “I can beat you up, / a seven says to a six” (13-14). The boys are behaving their age. The boys are competitive, irrational and youthful. However, the mother envisions her son and his friends as mature men. She first introduces

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 the poem, parallelism can be identified

Sharon Olds, one of the most well-known poets with several awards winning titles such as the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. According to Poetry Foundation, Olds is known for writing “intensely personal, emotionally scathing poetry” and has been one of the most “forthright poets at chronicling familial and erotic relationships”. The poem “Sex Without Love” is exactly that, she uses irony, metaphors and free verse throughout. The speaker of the poem seems to be someone who is

In the poem “On the Subway,” Sharon Olds uses imagery and descriptive language, tone, and metaphors and similes to express the contrast between the two individuals and her thoughts afterwards. Olds uses imagery and descriptive language to show the differences between them. She’s white he’s black, he’s “dressed poorly like that of a mugger” but she has on a fur coat. She’s eating steak but he is not, and they are on opposite sides of the car. She also uses similes and metaphors. “A couple of molecules

In Sharon Olds’ poem, “The Victims”, she is able to vividly shows readers an inside look on a family’s divorce. Olds illustrates a theme of an abusive life by her tone throughout the poem. The poem draws readers in through its imagistic language, metaphor, and alliteration. The speaker is illustrated by two points of view, first as a child, and the next through a mature adult trying to make sense of past events. Just as the speakers points of view change, so do the poetic devices. It is through

My favorite poem from our reading list was “Sex without Love” by Sharon Olds. It really hit home for me because, I’m truly going through something right now that I feel the same way. I don’t understand how people can just go have sex and not have strong deep feelings for someone. The poem describes how unique and magnificent sex can be. Then questions how you can anyone encounter so much passion without the emotion of love. You have to be so self-absorbed to desire the intimacy with affection but

together. “Last Night” by Sharon Olds and “Seniors” by Alberto Rios cover a variety of topics, but most importantly they both cover love and sex. More specifically, they cover both what the male and female thoughts are about sex, what their expectations are during the act, and where love comes into play. Both speakers are memorializing their past experiences, the experiences between the two are exceedingly different. Both poems have very similar intentions,

Stag’s Leap Sharon Olds is a prominent feminist writer in the American Literature. She was born in San Francisco and attended Stanford and Columbia universities. Her first book, “Satan Says” (1980) received the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award and her second, “The Dead and the Living,” was both the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award (Olds). Her writings have attracted leaders all over the world, and the most remarkable collection of

context the reader uses for the author’s choice of words. Sharon Olds is an American poet born in 1942; her first published book of poems was in 1980. Olds is an expressive writer that writes about the intimate topics of life, “Like Whitman, Sharon Olds celebrates the body and writes about it without shame” (Norton Anthology 856). Olds’s poems go beyond just intimacy, they explore the crevices of each subject and gives a new perspective of them. Olds is a confessional poetry writer which, means the author