When I read the Sharon Olds poems this week, I wondered how much of the subject material Olds felt and how much of it was for shock value. I know that I sound like something of a “hater” (as the kids these days say), but the fact of the matter is that I have a hard time thinking of a situation in which I felt the need (for example) to compose a short poem about the Pope’s genitalia. Along those same lines, I have never felt the need to compose anything about my father being naked or any sort of sexual fluid either. I realize that I’m not the yard stick by which the world is measured (thank goodness for the world), but something within me is having a hard time relating to Olds’ poetry.
However, I did really enjoy “Photograph of the Girl” by Olds. Her poem really was the reading equivalent of looking at a photograph: all of the visual details were heart-wrenchingly there in words. While reading the first part of the poem, I felt like I was standing right next to the girl, watching her suffer, but unable to do anything. When the poem shifts to read the “caption” in line 12 I felt like I was reading the caption over the persona’s shoulder and that I should make some sort of follow up comment to the persona. The imagery involved at the end of the poem in lines 14-16 (“Deep in her body/ the ovaries let our her first eggs,/ golden as drops of grain.”) was both beautiful and terribly depressing. Yeah, this girl is reaching an exciting time in her life (starting to grow up), but she’ll never need to. She’s dying. The ironic juxtaposition of life (manifested by the eggs) to the death the reader is told will happen a few lines back just feels wrong. Stylistically, it’s wonderful; in practice, the girl’s imminent death is all different colors of wrong.
The one line in particular in “Photograph of the Girl” that really haunted me after finishing started on line 10: “She cannot be beautiful, but she is/ starving.” Yikes. Olds is shockingly honest and hits adolescence on the nose. I would argue that many adolescent girls at some point in time feel the pressure to be beautiful. However, I would also argue that while adolescence has its own beauty, most adolescents aren’t what it considered traditionally beautiful. Olds flat out says that this girl “cannot be beautiful.” Then, as if to compensate for that fact, the reader is told that the girl is starving. Well, she can’t be beautiful, but whatever, doesn’t really matter, she’s starving. Yikes.
I realize the role of shock and pushing the limits in conventional anything, and I know that it makes me sound completely establishment, but I’m still not the biggest fan of Olds. She’s a gifted poet, but I just can’t get into/relate to all of her subjects in a way that would lead to the enjoyment of her poems.
Fin.
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