Essays on Sharon Olds

[Class Title]

Sharon Olds is an American poet whose literary works were noted for their “powerful, often erotic, imagery of the body”. Olds was born in San Francisco, California in 1942 and grew up in an abusive family, which, most likely, inspired her writing style. Among her notable works that appealed to many audiences were ‘Satan Says’ where Olds described her sexuality in a daring manner and ‘The Dead and the Living’ wherein she examined the life and death under the context of domesticity. The ‘Photograph of a Girl,’ is one of Old’s poems that describe the conflict ...

The poem “The Race” by Sharon Olds and “In the Desert” by Stephen Crane are the poems chosen for the poetic analysis. The first one is a blank verse that in details describes the thoughts of the main hero, the second stands out as a perfectly concise dialogue, which encourages own independent self-analysis. They are unified with the similar topic, which depicts the importance of human soul and neglects everything material. Nevertheless, there are also a lot of differences in poetic form, linguistic and stylistic devices chosen. For sure, some of them are predetermined by the time when the ...

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The story, the poem is depicting is about a daughter’s trip back home to see a glimpse of her sick father. It shows how she faced the obstacles hurdling in front of her. It also explains the difficult relationship she had with him but still wanted to be beside her father before he died. From the poem, we can assume that the central character, the daughter, is determined and courageous as well as loving. She was responsible enough to realise that it was a daughter’s duty to be beside her father at the time of his need, especially at ...

Of all the literary works we’ve read so far in this class the one that stands out to me as the most impactful, one that I will think about beyond my studies in Langston Hughes, “I, Too.” Poems, like people do not immediately reveal to you what makes a person drawn to them over others, but on further reflection the reasons tend to become clear. In considering why I like this poem, I feel it is the language; the compositional style and the theme of the poem that makes me put it into that subjective category of “my favorite” ...

A. What, for you, is the basic point and the most important observations that Stephen Dunn makes in his essay "Basketball and Poetry: The Two Richies"? Discuss with reference to your own experience.

In Stephen Dunn's essay "Basketball and Poetry: The Two Richies," Dunn explains the relationship between his prime years on the basketball team and his work as a poet; for both of these sides of his life, he had two individuals named Richie who provided very important and disparate functions in relation to his own experience. Richie Swartz, a skilled basketball player, better than Dunn, caused him to ...